William Cash: Will the Leader of the House acknowledge that the City of London, which lies at the heart of our economy, with 15 per cent. of gross domestic product, is absolutely crucial? The debate she has proposed for 1 December is going to be crucial, as the European Scrutiny Committee has said. Does she accept that it is absolutely essential that we have a proper, substantive motion that is capable of amendment, so that we can ensure that majority voting and co-decision arrangements, and the power and jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, do not dictate to us the manner in which our financial services are run in future?

Peter Bone: I congratulate the Leader of the House on becoming parliamentarian of the year. More importantly, however, in the annual review of Cabinet Ministers' rankings she has shot up from No. 11 to No. 2. As the founder and, sad to say, only member of HOTS-Harriet's Official Tory Supporters-may I ask her for a statement about whether her rise is likely to continue, and whether she can break through the glass ceiling and become No. 1?

Bernard Jenkin: Pursuant to that last question, may I remind the Leader of the House that the Committee on Reform of the House of Commons was established precisely to address people's perception that this House is not doing its job of scrutinising Government business properly? Given her answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Chope)-that she could give no guarantees about how the results of the Committee's work would be dealt with-let me return to the point made by my right hon. Friend the shadow Leader of the House that it would be appropriate to make a statement on the publication of the report next Tuesday. We will have time to read it before she stands up to make it, as the report is to be published in the middle of the night. We look forward to the Government responding to proposals about how Government business can be much better scrutinised, so could the Leader of the House tell us how she will respond to the Committee's findings? I remind her that she had to withdraw her original motion.

Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
	Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, supported by the Prime Minister, Secretary Yvette Cooper, Mr. Liam Byrne, Mr. Pat McFadden, Mr. Stephen Timms, Sarah McCarthy-Fry and Ian Pearson, presented a Bill to restate, with minor changes, certain enactments relating to corporation tax and certain enactments relating to company distributions; and for connected purposes.
	 Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Monday 23 No vember, and to be printed (Bill 1 ) with explanatory notes (Bill 1-EN).

Presentation and resumption of proceedings (Standing Order No. 80A)
	Mr. Secretary Straw, supported by the Prime Minister, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary David Miliband, Secretary Alan Johnson, Tessa Jowell, Mr. Michael Wills and Mr. Wayne David, presented a Bill to make provision relating to the civil service of the State; to make provision relating to the ratification of treaties; to amend section 2 of the House of Lords Act 1999 and make provision relating to the removal, suspension and resignation of members of the House of Lords; to repeal sections 132 to 138 of the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 and to amend Part 2 of the Public Order Act 1986; to make provision relating to time limits for human rights claims against devolved administrations; to make provision relating to judges and similar office holders; to make provision relating to the Comptroller and Auditor General and to establish a body corporate called the National Audit Office; to amend the Government Resources and Accounts Act 2000 and to make corresponding provision in relation to Wales.
	 Bill read the First and Second time without Question put, and committed (Standing Order No. 80A and Order, 20 October ); to be printed (Bill 4) with explanatory notes (Bill 4-EN).

Presentation and resumption of proceedings (Standing Order No. 80A)
	Ms Harriet Harman, supported by the Prime Minister, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Secretary Straw, Secretary Alan Johnson, Mr. Secretary Denham, Secretary Ed Balls, Secretary Yvette Cooper, Mr. Sadiq Khan, Mr. Pat McFadden, the Solicitor-General and Michael Jabez Foster, presented a Bill to make provision to require Ministers of the Crown and others when making strategic decisions about the exercise of their functions to have regard to the desirability of reducing socio-economic inequalities; to reform and harmonise equality law and restate the greater part of the enactments relating to discrimination and harassment related to certain personal characteristics; to enable certain employers to be required to publish information about the differences in pay between male and female employees; to prohibit victimisation in certain circumstances; to require the exercise of certain functions to be with regard to the need to eliminate discrimination and other prohibited conduct; to enable duties to be imposed in relation to the exercise of public procurement functions; to increase equality of opportunity; and for connected purposes.
	 Bill read the First and Second time without Question put (Standing Order No. 80A and Order,  13 May ) ; to be considered  on  Monday 23 November, and to be printed (Bill 5) with explanatory notes (Bill 5-EN).

Presentation and resumption of proceedings (Standing Order No. 80A)
	Mr. Stephen Timms, supported by the Prime Minister, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Secretary Ed Balls, Secretary Yvette Cooper, Mr. Liam Byrne, Jim Knight, Dawn Primarolo and Helen Goodman, presented a Bill to set targets relating to the eradication of child poverty, and to make other provision about child poverty.
	 Bill read the First and Second time without Question put (Standing Order No. 80A and Order,  20 July ) ; to be considered  on  Monday 23 November, and to be printed (Bill 10) with explanatory notes (Bill 10-EN).

Edward Balls: I fear that the hon. Gentleman is as confused as the Conservatives' Front-Bench spokesman. Yesterday on the "Today" programme, the hon. Member for Surrey Heath began an interview at 7.10 am by saying that our Child Poverty Bill was a gimmick and a political device. By 7.15 am, he was saying that he would support it.
	The fact is that between 1979 and 1997 child poverty doubled. The fact is that over the past 12 years the number of children in poverty has fallen by more than 600,000. We will do more. What I want is a cross-party consensus that child poverty should be eradicated. If the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) is willing to join that consensus, he should know that it is not about political dividing lines, but about Governments' delivering fairness and equality. He should be supporting that.
	I know that Opposition Members find this very difficult, particularly the hon. Member for Surrey Heath. At every stage, his approach to our more teachers, more investment and raising of standards is to run down the achievements of teachers, head teachers and our young people each year. Every few weeks, we hear a repetition of the usual litany from the hon. Gentleman. He comes along to the House, reads out what he calls our Mickey Mouse test questions in GCSE exams, and tries to use them in order to demonstrate that there has been dumbing down, that the exams are too easy, and that there is no rigour in our state education system.
	I have to say that that is total and absolute nonsense. I have been checking exam papers over the last few weeks. I had a look at the GCSE additional science and biology paper. First question, first page:
	"Name the type of enzyme that digests stains containing fats."
	It sounds quite difficult to me. Does the hon. Gentleman have an answer? I should be happy to take an intervention from him.
	Right. Let us try another one: "Explain how a fluoride atom can change into a fluoride ion." The hon. Gentleman is well known as an erudite and intellectual man. What is the answer? Let me repeat: "Explain how a fluoride atom can change into a fluoride ion." Does he want to try that? Does he want to try?
	Third one, then.  [Interruption.] Look, to be honest, these are really hard. I do not know the answers; I am asking whether the hon. Gentleman knows the answers. The third question comes from the mathematics exam, GCSE, June 2008: "Work out 33/4 minus 1" Does the hon. Gentleman want to try? I asked the Minister for Schools and Learners a moment ago. He worked it out as two and seven twentieths.. I do hope that he is right. The Minister for Further Education, Skills, Apprenticeships and Consumer Affairs checked it as well, and he says that that is the right answer.
	Hard questions, Mr. Speaker-hard questions in tough exams in which our young people are doing very well. But I have to say that there is one question to which I do know the answer. Why are more young people leaving school with good grades? It is not because there is dumbing down and the exams are getting easier; it is because of the hard work of pupils and parents and teachers and head teachers, and the investment and reform that the hon. Gentleman's party has opposed consistently over the past 12 years.

Edward Balls: I will come on to discuss the free market-and actually, when we look into the detail, rather interesting-policies of the hon. Member for Surrey Heath, but as the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Evennett) raises the issue, let me say that, yes, I am not satisfied, because 50 per cent. of pupils getting five good GCSEs including English and maths is not good enough, but the proportion was not 50 per cent. in 1997; it was a third of pupils-about 33 or 34 per cent.-12 years ago. We have made real progress with investment and reform; there are rising standards and more good teachers. The hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford should be backing our reforms and proposals, rather than trying to run them down for party political and partisan reasons, contrary to the facts and the reality.
	The Leader of the Opposition said yesterday that he was embarrassed-that we were trying to embarrass him. There is nothing embarrassing in this Conservative Front-Bench team saying, "We will guarantee parents and pupils a good school." There is nothing embarrassing in it saying, "For 16-year-olds, we will guarantee a school, college or apprenticeship place." The reason why the hon. Member for Surrey Heath is embarrassed is that the shadow Chancellor will not let him make the pledge. That is why under a Tory Government there would be young people leaving school and not getting a school, college or apprenticeship place. That is why he is embarrassed. Conservative Back Benchers should not be embarrassed, however; they should be pressing their Front-Bench team to get in the real world.
	The reality is that we are the party that is more ambitious. We are the ones who, on this track record, want to do more. We know that we need excellence for all, rather than just some, children in our schools and school system. The only way to do that-as the Bill, which the Conservative party should support, sets out-is on the basis of investing in public services and having clear entitlements for public service users. It also involves backing local leaders-the hon. Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford mentioned this-to deliver services by devolving power, responsibility and accountability, and matching that with stronger accountability through the report card, as well as, where needed and as a last resort, not leaving things to the free market free-for-all, but stepping in and demanding the best for every pupil in every school. That is what our guarantees are all about.
	Let me say something about health, which will also be debated over the course of today. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health is now proposing to back patients by turning targets into entitlements-an entitlement for all NHS patients to start treatment within 18 weeks, for them to see a cancer specialist within two weeks when referred by their GP, and where that is not possible, for the NHS to take all steps to find an alternative provider. He is also proposing a new legal right to an NHS health check every five years for 40 to 74-year-olds, and to lay the foundations for a national care service, starting with free personal care for those with the greatest needs. Those are guarantees which, aside from the political games being played, will have families in homes around the country saying, "Yes, that is what we want." That is what a Labour Government will deliver.
	In schools, too-

Edward Balls: In a moment. Secondly, there will be a personal tutor for every secondary school pupil, who will be a point of contact for the pupil and their parent throughout their time in secondary school. There will also be strong and effective discipline through tough home-school agreements so every family knows their responsibilities and schools have the power to take action to deliver discipline where needed. There is also-I have mentioned this before-our September guarantee to school leavers, and now our new January guarantee of a place in education, which we will deliver and the Conservative party would deny. That is not politics; it is about the lives of young people. It is about their chance of having a job, a career or an apprenticeship, which we will invest in and the Conservative party wants to cut. That is the reality.

Ann Cryer: Does my right hon. Friend agree that Opposition Members frequently do not represent the sort of constituencies that we represent? They therefore do not have an understanding that some parents are incapable of helping their children, sometimes because they are on drugs and sometimes because they simply do not have any English. We do not want that sort of situation, but we are in it, and I do not think that there is a magic-wand solution to it. Some of our schools are doing wonderful work with these children. I have three schools where 95 per cent. of pupils enter without a word of English, yet many of those kids are ready to take A-levels at 18. We have to look for value added, and these are very difficult circumstances.

Edward Balls: If a real-terms rise in education funding is needed for a better future will the hon. Gentleman commit to it today?

Michael Gove: I am so sorry, Mr. Speaker. I was just attempting to deal with the split-personality issues on the Government Front Bench.
	In Hartlepool, the constituency of the Member who, I believe, does sit on the Government Front Bench, although he is sadly not there at the moment, the college principal says that there are more than 50 students in his college for whom he has no funding. The September guarantee does not apply to them, does it? There is a shortfall of £400,000 in the budget, and he says:
	"It's crazy,"
	He goes on to ask:
	"How can I...keep to the September guarantee if I do not know if I am going to get funded to do so? There is a good chance that I will be turning 40 or 50 students away from this college. And, given the absence of apprenticeships in this area, unless other schools and colleges take these young people, they are likely to become neets."
	In Cirencester, the college principal, Nigel Robbins, has not even received enough cash from the Secretary of State to cover a shortfall from last year, when more than 100 students received no funding. This year, another 110 students are unfunded-a shortfall of £450,000. The principal is furious with the Government. He says that
	"young people who fail to get a job...will...ask for a place"
	in his college, and he continues:
	"In the past we would have taken them."
	Now, however, he says:
	"This year I will be saying, 'No, sorry, there is no room. We refuse to take you...because no one is funding us for this place'."
	No September guarantee in Hartlepool; no September guarantee in Cirencester.
	In Scunthorpe, the college principal, Nic Dakin, has also complained. He warns that
	"the situation is...very tight."
	On the question whether he can accept new students, He says:
	"The reality is that we are very, very full."
	Mr. Dakin is not a Tory troublemaker but the recently selected prospective parliamentary candidate for the Labour party in Scunthorpe. He was chosen on an honesty ticket, because he would tell it straight on behalf of his community. He will be popular with the Whips when he gets here.

Michael Gove: Our party's position in 2010-11 is to contest and fight a general election, win it, I hope, get rid of this discredited Government and ensure that the hon. Gentleman has more opportunities to pursue his interest in education. I am delighted that he, as the Member for Dumfries and Galloway, has come to the Chamber to sit on the green Benches. Indeed, it is striking that the Government have so little support: the only people on their Benches are Parliamentary Private Secretaries and the Chairman of the Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families. The Government have had to draft in Members from Scotland to provide the Secretary of State with support, but I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman is so interested in public spending south of the border. Let me assure him that education is safe in our hands.
	Unfortunately for the Secretary of State, none of his guarantees is defensible, credible or funded. The January guarantee is supposed to give every young person not in employment, education or training a guaranteed place at school, college or on a training course, but that is what the September guarantee was supposed to offer. The Prime Minister said that, by adding 45,000 places, the new guarantee would build on the 55,000 places that the September guarantee funded, making 100,000. The truth, however, is that there are many more than 100,000 young people in need of a place at college.
	Today, we discover that there is a record number of young people not in education, employment or training-more than 1 million overall, and more than at any time since the Government have been in power. There are more than 140,000 16 and 17-year-olds not in education, employment or training. How many of them will not benefit because the Government's September and January guarantees are not worth the paper they are not written on?
	The fundamental problem with all these guarantees is that the Government have run out of money and are reduced to printing promises that they know they cannot redeem. They are economically bankrupt, ideologically bankrupt and politically bankrupt. They have completely run out of ideas on pushing forward reform in schools, and the Opposition parties are now making the running in the education debate: our arguments reflect the global tide in favour of more autonomy for professionals, better accountability for the public, greater choice for parents and higher standards overall.
	The Government have tried to respond to the fact that the intellectual tide is moving away from them, but their response only shows how tired, exhausted and barren they are. More and more parents every year signal that they are unhappy with schools, and we propose radical change to give them more choice. Let me tell the House what the Government propose. In the schools White Paper, they state:
	"Local authorities will survey parents as they apply to secondary schools, and will ask parents whether they are satisfied with the quality and range of provision."
	We might expect the Government to ask parents if they are satisfied with the choice well before they have to choose, but the lameness of the Government's response does not end there. The White Paper continues:
	"If a sufficient proportion of parents are dissatisfied".
	We do not know what a sufficient proportion is-5 per cent., 25 per cent., 50 per cent? What if one parent is dissatisfied? I thought that every child was supposed to matter. Anyway, if a sufficient proportion is dissatisfied, the White Paper states that
	"the local authority should consult parents about their specific concerns and work with them to improve the choice, range, governance and type of...schools".
	The question is: why has not the local authority improved things before? We all know that very often it is at fault. The local authority, as the monopoly supplier of schools in an area, may often have resisted diversity, prevented choice and stood in the way of increasing standards
	According to the Government plan, dissatisfied parents should, after their own children have been allocated to a school with which they are unhappy, work with the local authority to help write a new "plan" to be published in due course-heaven knows when. When the plan is produced, it might include proposals for federating schools, expanding some schools, even opening new schools-or perhaps none of the above, because there is no requirement on the local authority to do anything quickly. However, if parents are unhappy when the proposals are introduced, what do they do? The White Paper says that they can
	"appeal to the Schools Adjudicator if they are not happy with the resulting plan, in the same way they can currently appeal about local admission arrangements."
	If parents are not happy about how one bureaucracy responds to bureaucratic failure, they can ask another bureaucrat to get his bureaucracy to take a look at it. How long do we have to wait before that process starts? The Government say that later this year they will work with up to 10 local authorities to trial the approach, then use that trial to decide how things might work and further consult on its introduction.
	To say that the process is advancing at a sloth-like pace is a slander against sloths, and a gross underestimation of the sense of urgency of which those gentle, leaf-eating mammals are capable. By the time the whole process is complete, the children who are in underperforming schools will be so old that they will be getting a telegram from the Queen before their A-level results.

Michael Gove: I am grateful for the Secretary of State's acknowledgement of that retreat-another of his retreats-from the original promise. The commitment is no longer to one-to-one tuition but to one-to-one or small group tuition. The problem with the Secretary of State is that all his guarantees and commitments are literally incredible because he does not have backing from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, nor does he have the resources to deliver, nor the originality of policy.
	The Secretary of State could give guarantees today that would be credible and welcome and that we would unhesitatingly support. He could guarantee, as we would, that children in comprehensives would have access to the same high-quality exams as those in private schools by lifting the ban on state schools doing the rigorous international GCSEs in English and maths. He could guarantee, as we would, that every child who can do so is reading fluently after two years of primary school by introducing a universal national reading test to ensure that all children are decoding fluently and that dyslexic children are identified early. He could guarantee, as we would, to raise the prestige and esteem of teaching by saying no one with poor GCSEs or a poor degree could become a teacher. He could guarantee, as we would, to deal with failure in more of our poorest schools by promising to take quickly the 100 worst out of local authority control.
	The Secretary of State could guarantee, as we would, to improve behaviour by giving teachers more powers to keep order, as well as greater freedom to search pupils and to ban disruptive items. He could guarantee, as we would, to give teachers proper protection from false allegations and to give heads the power to exclude violent children without being overruled. He could guarantee, as we would, to get more great graduates into teaching by expanding the Teach First scheme. He could guarantee, as we would, to make more superb graduates heads of department and head teachers by expanding the Teaching Leaders and Future Leaders programmes. He could guarantee, as we would, to give all heads more freedom and control by allowing all high-performing schools to become academies. He could guarantee, as we would, more choice and improved standards in primary schools by allowing primary schools to become academies. He could even guarantee, as we would, a system of funding for pupils which concentrates resources on the very poorest.
	Sadly, however, the Secretary of State opposes all those guarantees, which is why he cannot guarantee what parents, children and schools need most of all: a Government relentlessly committed to raising standards, with the poorest helped most of all; a Government determinedly focused on supporting teachers, with the powers that they need delivered without delay; and a Government unreservedly on the side of parents and children against bureaucracy. The only way that we can get such a Government is through a general election-it cannot come soon enough.

Barry Sheerman: I hear what the hon. Gentleman, a member of my Committee, says, and I am not going to rise to it.
	I have given the context, and I now want to be critical of the Government. I do not want to get too much into school accountability, but the Queen's Speech addressed it directly in a number of ways and I suggest to my party's Front Benchers that there are some concerns. I am not saying that what was in the Queen's Speech was all bad, but when we consider what school accountability is about, people say, "Well, that means Ofsted, doesn't it?" It does not. It means all the people involved in the school improvement process, such as the governing body-we underrate governing bodies and all the wonderful people who give their time and effort to be school governors-school improvement partnerships, local authorities and the whole range of bodies that call schools to account. Of course it covers Ofsted, and it also covers how testing and assessment are turned into school tables and published. Schools are accountable in a whole range of ways.
	Sitting where I do, I sometimes think that we make schools so accountable that we paralyse them from action-not entirely, but it is a question of balance. Those of us in the House who take an interest in education will know that when the Department for Children, Schools and Families was set up, the remit of our Committee changed. It is a difficult remit, because it is not a tidy departmental responsibility. Matters to do with children, schools and families stretch across at least 10 Departments.
	The Committee wanted to consider three things about school accountability, which are what most people think of as the three great educational reforms in the past 20 years. They date from about Lord Baker's time, although they are not all associated with him. We all know them. The first is testing and assessment, and I remember that people always used to say that Ken Baker, as he then was, had read "The One Minute Manager", which said that if something cannot be measured, it cannot be managed. They said that that was behind the great fashion for testing and assessment that has run through this country's education for the past 20 years.
	The second matter that we wanted to consider was the national curriculum. Everyone in the Chamber will know that we believed that although the inspiration behind it was right-testing and assessment had gone too far-it was too crowded and needed greater flexibility. We said that the pendulum should swing back in the other direction.
	The third matter was school accountability. I cannot go into too much detail about what we are going to say about it, but I shall give a tiny bit of the flavour of our analysis. School accountability should lead to improvement both in schools and in children's well-being and outcomes. Too often, schools focus on the former rather than the latter. They focus just on examination results rather than on the other things that we do for children in schools, which are broader than just the number who get good GCSEs.
	Any Government have to get their message clear, because it is not school buildings or testing and assessment that improve the quality of education that children get. The quintessential element that improves their education is the quality of the teaching that they get. It is not rocket science, is it? It is about the quality of the teachers and of the leadership and support of the teaching team. In everything that we do, the priority should be investment in high-quality teachers. We have seen more investment in teachers and some really good change in the quality of people coming into teaching and being retained. It has not gone far enough, but it has gone pretty darn far.
	Teaching staff want some stability in their lives. It looked as though the new relationship with schools would bring about a real change in what schools faced, such as a simplification of red tape, rules, regulations and so on. I say to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State that although some simplification has flowed from it, there is still a bewildering array of new initiatives. That has partly negated all the good stuff in the new relationship.
	We have also had the Government's "21st century schools" White Paper, which signalled even greater complexity in many ways. Additional statutory duties on governors are coming through, and there was the national challenge, which was mishandled in some ways. There were good intentions, but initially the wrong view was given to many schools about the value that they were adding to the educational process.
	We have not yet written up the final report on school accountability, but my own view is that the strong thing about evaluation in schools is their self-evaluation. That is important both in how Ofsted approaches the running of a school and in a school's quality. However, we have yet again seen the role that Ofsted plays. Self-evaluation started and it told our Committee, "We want self-evaluation to be innovative and imaginative. We actually have schools that make videos of what they do." However, I think I visit more schools than anyone in the Chamber-the Secretary of State has probably overtaken me, but if he ever moves on to a new job I might still be here and going to schools, as I have been for 10 years-and I find that everyone says of the self-evaluation form, "They say you don't have to fill this in, but I'm not going to be the one who puts their head above the parapet and does not fill in the form in the way that Ofsted says".
	The Committee and I will look very carefully at the Queen's Speech and the guarantees that have been announced. There are some very good ones, and I hope that we will find a system that is less onerous on schools, gives them more power of self-regulation and takes some of the load off them in areas where they have been getting too many complex messages.
	We have the right to point out in this debate something that was missing from the Queen's Speech. As Chairman of the Children, Schools and Families Committee, I have learned a great deal about child protection. There have been tragic cases up and down the country, including the murder of children and dreadful things happening to them in extreme cases. A worrying number of vulnerable children have come to dreadful ends and been dreadfully treated in our country. It is a small percentage, but it much concerns everyone in the field.
	Child protection is a vital element of the work of the Department and the Select Committee, but I would have liked today's debate to have touched on the protection of childhood. We have an interesting and laudable ambition for the eradication of child poverty by 2020, and I celebrate that, although it will be darn hard to achieve, because the goalposts will move all the time. It will be a great struggle, although some very good things have been achieved already.
	I want to talk, however, about the poverty of childhood. When I started talking to, and being lobbied by, people, as Chairman of the Committee, I felt some reluctance toward those who said that we were truncating and squeezing childhood and that the pressure on children in our country was intolerable. However, having considered the matter, I think that it is true. The commercial world impacts on children. They are seen as a soft target for advertising and are pressured into growing up too young; they are pressured to adopt fashion accessories too young and to have mobile phones and accessories and so many other things too young. Often they are pressurised by advertisers.
	I have said this to the Secretary of State before: to have a Cabinet colleague who believes, in an age of childhood obesity, that we should relax the rules on product placement seems damn crazy. I believe that very strongly. The pressures on children from commercial advertising alone are already great, without their getting even worse.

Barry Sheerman: The hon. Gentleman is right, and he knows that I agree with him.
	Another aspect of childhood today is sexual awareness. Our country still has worryingly high rates of teenage pregnancy. The life of a girl who gets pregnant very young is more or less likely to be destroyed-she will probably always be poor-but we do not take that seriously enough in this country.
	The country is also awash with a focus on early sexual activity. I talked recently with members of another Select Committee who had looked at the amount of pornography on the internet available to children. That disturbs me greatly. An inquiry has been conducted into that- [Interruption.] An hon. Gentleman is laughing, but I think that the accessibility of pornography to children in our schools is a serious matter. When I go to infant schools, teachers say to me, "Children come here, at five and six, simulating sexual behaviour that they should know nothing about." That is disgusting.
	I was angered the other day when I read that Rupert and James Murdoch wanted to turn BSkyB into a more trusted and loved broadcaster than the BBC. Two days before, I had read that the Murdoch empire is not only the biggest carrier of pornography in the world, but has now bought a major supplier and maker of pornography in the United States. I do not know what "trusted" and "loved" meant, but a company that makes such filth available to children does not impress me. Our children should be protected from pornography, whether it is on BSkyB or the internet. Childhood should be protected.
	I shall say something that Government Front-Bench Members might not like. I talked earlier about the age of 18 being the age at which children cease to be children. I shall return to the Government's guarantees set out in the Queen's Speech, but first I remind the House of the five outcomes-the guarantees of childhood-in "Every Child Matters": to be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution and achieve economic well-being. There is nothing wrong with those.
	I would like, however, to say one thing to Front-Bench Members and, given the opportunity, to the Prime Minister. In an answer during Prime Minister's questions last Wednesday, the Prime Minister said that he now believes in votes at 16. I think that that fashion started with the Liberal Democrats, but the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House now seem to believe it too. However, I think that we should think extremely carefully before moving to votes at 16-it would mean adulthood at 16 and the end of the protections of childhood between 16 and 18.
	Many of the things that I speak about are based on evidence sessions and intensive consideration of a subject. The first inquiry last year was on children in care and looked-after children. Having seen the vulnerability of 14 to 16-year-old children, and that of 16 to 18-year olds out in the world who are open to every kind of exploitation, we realised at the end of the inquiry that we do not want the protections of childhood to finish at 16. We lose those protections at 18 to our cost as a society.
	I have commented on what I liked about the Queen's Speech-it contained some very good things-and it is my Select Committee's job to ensure that they measure up to the way that they were promulgated in the House yesterday and today. There are one or two things that I wish had been in the Queen's Speech, but hon. Members can be assured that Select Committee members will consider promulgating those ideas in the coming months.

David Laws: I am grateful to the Secretary of State for that clarification. As we have been drawn into discussing the Badman review rather earlier in my speech than I had intended, all I would say now is this: first, we accept the Government's approach of saying that it is sensible for all those who are home educating to be registered. That is a reasonable minimum requirement. Our concerns, which will need to be debated when we scrutinise the proposals in detail, is whether the registration process will involve imposing a central vision of education by the back door. We are concerned also that home educators have gained the impression that there is seen as being a particular relationship between home education and child protection, which has caused a lot of anger throughout the country. The Government may not have intended that, but that is certainly the impression created by the Badman review.
	We will also want to debate carefully the issue that the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart) raised and the Secretary of State touched on, which is what powers local authorities should have and what oversight they should have of home education. I would hope that in most cases a light-touch approach would be taken, but most Members would also want to ensure that in extreme circumstances, where local authorities have genuine concerns, they should have the powers to ensure that parents are doing the job that they are claiming to do. Local authorities may have powers in relation to child protection; we will debate whether they have them in relation to oversight of the education provided.

Edward Balls: I take very seriously the interests and views of the NAHT, the NUT and the Association of School and College Leaders, as the hon. Gentleman does. However, I am sure that he would agree that, as well as listening to the views of teachers and the profession, it is important that we stand up for the rights of children and parents. The change to the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 does not affect schools directly. We now have a power under the 2009 Act to ask local authorities to consider issuing a warning notice. The new power will say that if they refuse to do so, we can issue one ourselves, if we believe that a school is consistently underperforming. Does he think that that is the right approach or does he prefer the "let the free market rip" approach proposed by the Conservative party?

David Laws: On the Secretary of State's latter question, there must be strategic oversight of schools at some level, although I am not sure that I agree at all with the Government's approach. My point was that if they wish to legislate on the issue, they should have done so in a coherent way in the previous education Bill, not by having the debate twice. When he says that the NUT and NAHT are not the only ones involved, I would refer him to what some of his own Back Benchers have been saying. He says that he respects very much the views of the NUT and the ASCL. Perhaps he also respects the views of the right hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke). I am not sure whether the Secretary of State heard the right hon. Gentleman's interesting speech yesterday, in which he even got a mention. However, in case the Secretary of State did not hear it, the right hon. Gentleman said that those guarantees
	"owe less to good government than to a premature expectation of defeat in advance of the general election."-[ Official Report, 18 November 2009; Vol. 501, c. 37.]
	The dividing lines therefore seem to be dividing the Secretary of State not from one faction in the House of Commons, but from virtually everybody involved in the education debate.
	Before I come to the important issue of guarantees, let me make it clear that the Liberal Democrats are certainly not opposed to having some core standards for public services, for which those services can be held to account. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) proposed a standard whereby if the NHS has not delivered treatment within a certain period, it should have the ability to pay for the patient concerned to go into the private sector. However, there is a big difference between such a guarantee, which is meaningful, deliverable and funded, which does not seek to micro-manage, which avoids bureaucracy and which focuses on the outcomes and not the inputs, and the list of guarantees that the Secretary of State has come up with in the Bill. The Bill contains 38 guarantees that are united only by the fact that most of them are either meaningless, undeliverable, bureaucratic and meddling or focus on inputs. As Peter Riddell said in  The Times this morning, guarantees without funding, some of which I want to return to, are not worth the paper that they are written on.
	The issue is not only whether pupils and parents will be deceived by the guarantees, but whether, in trying to implement some of them and force their delivery, we will end up creating enormous bureaucracy, encouraging a vexatious system that will draw many parents into going to the ombudsmen and drawing the ombudsmen into debates that they are unfit to participate in, given the scale of their resources and their ability to rule on such issues.
	I draw the Secretary of State back to a debate on some of the guarantees that he is proposing. They seem to me to fall into a number of categories. The first category consists of those that are meaningless or vague, and therefore pretty worthless. Earlier today, I raised with him pupil pledge 5 from the White Paper. I do not think that I had an answer from him on that point, so I will put it to him again. That pupil pledge says that every 11 to 14-year-old should enjoy
	"relevant and challenging learning in all subjects"
	and develop
	"their personal, learning and thinking skills so that they have strong foundations to make their 14-19 choices."
	Apparently, that will be phased in by September 2010.
	Can the Secretary of State tell us whether there are any schools in the country that are currently failing to deliver that pledge, in his view? If any parent went to the ombudsman to challenge that pledge and whether it was being delivered, they would find that the ombudsman would conclude that it is utterly meaningless and therefore utterly unenforceable. Is there any point creating supposed guarantees that cannot be enforced because nobody knows what they actually are?
	We also have a whole series of guarantees that seem to bring in an unwanted level of bureaucracy. Pupil guarantee 15, for example, says that
	"every pupil identified as gifted and talented receives written confirmation by their school of the extra challenge and support they will receive, by September 2010".
	Is that really a level of bureaucracy that we want to impose on schools? If we in this place actually believe what the Government constantly tell us-that every child matters-why try to pick out one small group of youngsters and associate such a measure with them, rather than assuming that the ability to serve the interests of all youngsters should not be relevant to all young people in schools and colleges?
	On the issue that was debated a second ago with the Conservative spokesman, parent guarantee 5 says that once a child is in school, their parents will be expected to sign a home-school agreement each year. Is the Secretary of State really suggesting that every parent whose child goes to an English school should be required to sign a home-school agreement, and that that should take place each and every year of school? If so, that also involves a level of bureaucracy that is totally unnecessary and would be unwanted and wasteful for the vast majority of schools.
	We come to the category of pledges that are probably undeliverable or are phrased in such a way that it would be almost impossible to decide whether the Government have met them. The supposed pledges made on sport and culture fall precisely into that category. Pupil guarantee 17 is supposed to guarantee
	"five hours...of high-quality PE and sport per week, in and out of school",
	yet we know that for 75 per cent. of children, that standard is not met at present. That pledge was supposed to have been delivered by September 2009. Can the Government say whether that is the first of the guarantees that they have failed to deliver? Their own statistics demonstrate that they are not delivering it today.
	What could any ombudsman make of the supposed guarantee on access to cultural education? All that it actually says is that
	"every pupil should have access to high-quality cultural activities in and out-of-school, with an aspiration that, over time, this will reach five hours a week for all".
	Does the Secretary of State really think that any parent who sought to challenge that guarantee-guarantee 19-could get any serious conclusion from an ombudsman on whether it was being delivered? I put it to him that it is phrased so as to be completely meaningless and unmeasurable.
	I return to an important guarantee, pupil guarantee 13, in this extraordinary list of 38 different supposed guarantees. The guarantee relates to one-to-one tuition in English and mathematics. Is that really the best way to deliver additional support to those youngsters for whom additional support is crucial? We have argued for a pupil premium to deliver additional resources in schools to help the most disadvantaged get up to the right level in terms of the basic skills that we expect them to have before they leave primary education and, unlike the Conservative party, we propose to fund it. Any pupil premium introduced in an environment where there is no overall increase in funding is simply undeliverable, because no Government of any party would be willing to take money away from schools to fund others.
	Is the pledge of 10 hours' free one-to-one tuition a sensible way to deliver support to youngsters who, after all, will have very different problems? The youngsters who fall beneath the threshold for intervention will include some who are very close to it and some who are disastrously far from it and will probably never meet it because of the nature of their special needs. In the modern world and the 21st century, what type of Government, other than one with the instincts of a Soviet Government of 50 or 100 years ago, would really think of prescribing centrally that the same number of hours, 10, should be delivered for all such youngsters, regardless of the views of teachers and head teachers on what they need, regardless of the need for flexibility to deliver in different-sized groups and regardless of whether some youngsters might need 20 or 25 hours and others with considerably fewer challenges might need only four or five?
	Surely that is the kind of pledge that gives the Government such a bad name for trying to impose such solutions from the top down. I hope that we will hear further responses on the matter from the Government next year, when they complete their review of deprivation. Surely the right answer is to introduce a fair system of funding for schools that delivers more, particularly to deprived youngsters, and then to allow the schools themselves to deliver the standards that need to be set nationally in a light-touch way and enforced by Ofsted.

David Laws: The Secretary of State raises a serious issue about how we achieve accountability for money that goes to schools, but his solution is still entirely the wrong one. The problem with him-this is what divides his grouping within the Labour party from my party and, to a certain extent, from the Conservative party, although the Conservatives have different ideas about the amount of devolution that should apply to schools-is that he believes, ultimately, that the man in Whitehall and Westminster knows best. There is no better version of the man in Whitehall and Westminster who thinks that he knows best than the Secretary of State.
	Because the Secretary of State thinks that he knows best, he thinks that the only way that schools can be trusted to deliver on such matters is for him to tell them precisely what they will have to deliver. The problem with that is that no Secretary of State can reflect from one desk in Westminster and Whitehall all the requirements, complexities and particular circumstances of 23,500 schools and 11.5 million pupils. He has gone way too far in this particular supposed guarantee in imposing a one-size-fits-all solution from Westminster and Whitehall. That is the wrong way of holding schools to account.

Edward Balls: I apologise to Members of the Conservative party, but this is the serious debate about policy that we did not have earlier from the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), so I would like to engage in it. There is an issue here. I agree that we have to make sure that we get more flexibility and power to head teachers and teachers, but at the same time, parents want to know that their school will be a good school and that if their child falls behind, they will get extra help. How can we ensure that that will happen without the right combination of accountability for the progress of every child and without telling parents that their child has a right to extra support? If we simply leave it to local decision making-or, as we know from the Conservatives, basically opt out entirely from the national curriculum of the state system and have a much more market-based free-for-all-it might work for some children, but how can we guarantee that a child from a particularly disadvantaged background whose parents may be less engaged will get the necessary support? How can we make sure that we deliver social justice in that way?

David Laws: The Secretary of State is trying to draw me into agreeing to something. Even though we would like to see a much more devolved system of education with much more freedom for schools, I agree that we will never end up delivering high school standards in the foreseeable future by relying only on market mechanisms. I would still like to see much more choice and competition in education, but we will need some type of strategic approach to make sure that schools deliver, particularly in the most deprived areas where, as the hon. Member for Keighley (Mrs. Cryer) said earlier, we cannot always assume that parents will have the ability or the inclination to move pupils around. We have to be able to bring successful schools to those communities and cannot rely on youngsters and parents moving large distances.
	Let me move on from this exchange with the Secretary of State to discuss the obvious issue of school accountability. Another important part of the debate is about the school report card. When we heard the statement on the White Paper in June or July this year, we said that we welcomed the idea of having a school report card. I think that there is potential to deliver a much better overview of what schools are achieving. At the moment, Ofsted goes to inspect every few years, but it is only every few years and circumstances in schools can change pretty rapidly. It would be valuable to know more about parental views and it would be useful to be able to compare families of schools with similar catchments rather than just on the basis of the overall results.
	We nevertheless have some fairly serious concerns about the school report card model that the Secretary of State is seeking to introduce. First, my understanding-I am happy to be corrected if I am wrong-is that the school report card is, to my surprise, going to be delivered not by Ofsted or even by local authorities, which, in the Government's jargon, although not usually in the substance, are supposed to be the commissioners of education, but by the Department for Children, Schools and Families. That rings all the alarm bells because trying to manage and oversee 23,500 schools from Westminster and Whitehall is deeply damaging. It potentially leads to a situation in which anyone running education from the Department has the strong incentive over time to demonstrate that schools are improving.
	I understand that in New York, where this school card approach has been tried, schools were initially awarded a single grade from A to F-or something like that-and there was originally quite a good distribution of schools in different categories. The latest figures came out from New York recently, but they showed that virtually all schools were graded in the A and B categories. That sends out a warning: there is a risk both of those who oversee these arrangements having an interest in the outcomes and of creating a whole series of measures of school performance that are woolly, difficult to measure-things such as well-being and pupil perception-and open to the predictable attempt by schools to meet the targets in any way possible, which often fails to measure what is going on underneath. Anyone serious about what is going on in education in this country is worried that the existing target approach used by the Government to drive up standards-with some success in many areas-is actually leading to serious distortions in what is being chosen in terms of subjects and how it is being delivered.
	I believe that Teach First graduates are giving a presentation of their views on education here next Monday; they will put forward their view that in some of the most deprived schools in the country, many youngsters end up making choices about the curriculum and qualifications based not on their own interests but on the desires of schools to achieve in the league tables. It is deeply worrying if choices are being made in education only to meet targets rather than because they are right for the pupils.

Peter Bottomley: It has been interesting to listen to today's speeches and some from yesterday also repay reading. I would particularly like to commend the speech of the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay), which showed what a model Member of Parliament can cover in not that many minutes after 17 years in Parliament. It was an inspiring speech, which I commend to anyone elected to this Parliament after the next election. It will show how it is possible to be on the Government side, pretty loyal, and interesting as well as representative of the interests of constituents.
	I would like say a few words to the Secretary of State, if I may have his attention for a moment.  [Interruption.] It is not comfortable for either the Prime Minister or the Secretary of State to spend all their time talking to people beside them on the Front Bench when a Member is trying to make a remark about them. It shows a discourtesy to the House which I find regrettable. The fact that the Secretary of State is now choosing to leave the Chamber could be described as going beyond what I had expected.
	I think that one camera ought to be trained on the person at the Dispatch Box when a Member on the other side of the House is speaking. Yesterday we saw the Prime Minister spending all his time chatting to people. During the part of the debate when the Secretary of State was not getting involved with the Liberal Democrat spokesman, he was talking to the person sitting beside him. All that he wanted was for the person beside him to smile and nod as though he were being very clever. I think that a better example would be given to people in our schools and colleges if the Secretary of State could actually listen to the debate that the Government have introduced. I think that that is what people in this country expect.
	When I speak in schools and colleges, I say to pupils, "If you are good enough, consider being a teacher." We want the best people to become teachers. They are not always the ones with firsts, or even the ones with degrees, but I think that in many fields, whether it is formal education or otherwise, being a teacher is one of the most rewarding of experiences, and certainly very important to society.
	My mother-in-law was a teacher, my sister has been a head teacher, my brother-in-law has been a lecturer, and two of our nieces are teachers. I think that it is tremendous to be able to provide education, together with inspiration, motivation, aspiration and dedication. It means saying, "I will not necessarily become as well off as some of my contemporaries who have gone into fields such as industry," but, at the end of a working life or, indeed, at the end of a whole life, being able to look back and say, "Here are the people whom I have helped to teach and to share an excitement and interest"-whether the subject was science, literature, languages, philosophy or mechanics.
	I went up to Cambridge last week to attend the launch of a book on the history of earth sciences at the university. A large part of it was dedicated to my great-great uncle, Sir Gerald Lenox-Conyngham. He never went to university, but he became a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Reader in geodesy and geophysics as a result of his help in developing those subjects. He has now been succeeded by Dan McKenzie, described by the present president of the Royal Society as probably the greatest living geophysicist, who made people aware of plate tectonics. Being able to challenge received ideas about what is going on inside our earth, let alone ideas about astronomy and even theories about how education can be made to work, is a great thing, and I am glad that today's debate is about education, although I shall also say a few words about health.
	My wife and I have five grandchildren who attend the same primary school that our three children attended. It has no advantage over other schools-it has as great an ethnic mix as any-except for the fact that, over the 40 years or so for which we have known it, the head teachers have been people who believed in order, and in having expectations of what teachers and children can achieve together. Every child learned to read, and, having learned to read, was given a hymn book. Every child learned to swim. Every child learned, when out, to behave in a way that prompted people to ask, "What school does that child come from? It must be very impressive." That is something that does not require money. It is something that should be common and shared, and I hope that it will be.
	The downside is that parents and teachers together do not always succeed. I hope that, when my party serves in government, we shall find a way of publishing, perhaps every two years, the results of studies keeping track of young people in each age cohort. I hope that we shall publish, for instance, the number of young people who each week, for the first time, commit a serious criminal offence. That figure used to be more than 2,000 a week. The vast majority of those young people were male, and by the age of 30 a third of young people had been convicted of an offence for which they could have been jailed for six months or more. I am glad that they were not, but those are pretty horrifying figures.
	I hope that the position is now changing, but it used to be the case that 5,000 people in this country took up smoking each week. The same number of cigarettes were being sold each week. We knew that 2,000 people had died-not all of them prematurely-and we knew that 3,000 had given up while still alive. Virtually all those 5,000 people were under 21. Smoking was a habit copied from other people-a social contagion.
	Let us take another issue that affects people's lives-not just the lives of teenagers, but those of many people in their 20s, 30s and 40s. The number of people in the country who, each week, contribute to a conception that ends in a termination is over 6,000. More than 40 per cent. of people will, at some stage in their lives, contribute to a conception that ends in a formal termination.
	All those figures are as easy to reduce as reducing the incidence of drink-driving among young men proved to be. We managed to reduce the number of occasions-2 million a week-on which a young man aged under 30 would drive a car having consumed more than the legal limit of alcohol to 600,000. Two thirds of a socially acceptable, body-breaking, illegal habit evaporated with no change in the law, no change in sentencing, and no change in enforcement. We achieved a change in understanding, a change in behaviour and a change in results.
	I do not claim that that was purely a Tory achievement, but some figures stick in my mind. In 1979, 1,800 people a year died in this country because a driver or rider had been on the roads having consumed more than the legal limit of alcohol. In 1986, when I became directly involved, the figure was 1,200, and it is now between 400 and 500. We have achieved massive reductions without having to opt for massive spending, massive legislation, more policing or any other Government-type approach. Making people behave differently is partly a political gift, partly a result of leadership, and partly a result of not devoting too much attention to things that do not work. We could have lowered the limit, we could have increased enforcement and we could have introduced all sorts of penalties, but none of those actions would necessarily have had the same impact.
	Let me return to the subject of education. What the Government propose is not necessarily based on bad ideas, but I have been looking at what has happened since 1997-for instance, the number of first-class packages sent to teachers and governors. I once asked a Minister how high a pile just the first-year's worth would make. The Minister could not answer. I think that far too much has been pushed out to people. What has not been said nearly often enough is that if something is working well, people will copy it. By discussing good practice and doing enough measuring to show what does not work, we can make a big change.
	I experienced my first public responsibility as a governor of a school in Lambeth, south London, which in theory contained 1,200 girls. Forty per cent. of the intake was judged to be ethnic-minority. It was not until I asked that I discovered that after the raising of the school leaving age, more than 30 per cent. of the young people were not in school each day. It was not until I asked that I discovered that more than 20 per cent. of the teachers were not in school each day. It was not until I was able to get two of the West Indian mothers on to the governing body that any girl was allowed to take an O-level in the fifth form. Within three years, we saw our first pupil go to medical school.
	Accepting lower standards and not having aspiration was seen to be a bad thing. One of our next-door neighbours in Lambeth said that he was sending his grandchildren back to Jamaica because they would be educated better there than they would be in London. That was shocking, and it was one reason why I decided to go into Parliament. I do not place a great deal of trust in the Bill that the Government are talking about, but I put a lot of faith in the ability of teachers of all political persuasions and none, working with parents of all political persuasions and none and with young people, to ensure that we see fewer failures and greater successes, and it becomes ingrained to bring respect into the fact of education and the excitement that it can bring.
	Let me turn, relatively briefly, to the subject of health. A great many acronyms have been floating around. My right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), the Leader of the Opposition, has pointed out that "NHS" were the letters missing from the Queen's Speech. No doubt that was an oversight. I am sorry if there was an oversight, but that was probably the reason.
	In 1997, the Government decided-for some reason that seemed to be pretty arbitrary-that the CHCs, or community health councils, would be abolished. That decision was followed by a succession of three or four changes in the way in which the interests of people in local communities in their health system would be focused in England. CHCs were not abolished in Scotland or in Northern Ireland, and I doubt that they were abolished in Wales. We repeatedly asked here, informally and formally, why that was being done, but no serious reason was ever given. When we ask now whose idea it was, no name comes forward. That is the kind of legislation which has a harmful impact on the ground.
	I hope that when we come into government-as I hope and presume that we will; I shall work hard to ensure that we do-we can, for a start, re-establish a Department for Education. I see no reason for us to continue to split education between different Departments. I also hope that we can have a Department of Health, which, if people want CHCs to be brought back with the same level of resources that they had before, will be able to do that. I think that-both in Greenwich, where I was first a Member of Parliament, and in my present constituency of Worthing-such a system, with some adaptations, would work better than the current system in which the load is placed on volunteers. The current system is almost impossible to describe, and very difficult to sell to those whom we wish to become involved.
	In respect of turning aspirations into laws-this is of relevance to the Queen's Speech-we must also acknowledge that Ministers, whether of the Labour, Conservative or any other party, should not introduce measures that will work badly.
	Incidentally, on the subject of Governments saying they want to enshrine in legislation things that they are committed to doing, such as halving the deficit, can we not move forward to a time when if a Government say they want to do something, they just do it, instead of passing a law that in effect says, "This is what we will find ourselves not to have done by law afterwards"? I find that difficult to justify to college students in my constituency.
	Turning to health, one of my greatest friends was a cardiologist called Professor Philip Poole-Wilson-indeed, he led the world's cardiologists. He told me, as did doctors in my own hospital, that the Government-or the Department of Health or the national health service, depending on who wants to take responsibility-plans for MMCs, or modernising medical careers, and the MTAS, or the Medical Training Application Service, system would work perversely.
	When the then Secretary of State had stopped being Secretary of State and two years later said she was surprised at how badly that had gone, we ask ourselves why had she not been listening at the time to Professor Philip Poole-Wilson, my local adviser, Dr. Gordon Caldwell, or some people on her own political side, and certainly many on my side, who had said that that was not going to work? When a good doctor with a relevant PhD in a clinical subject gets marked down, and somebody else has ripped 150 words on leadership off the internet and puts in an application, and five qualified doctors at a hospital not far from here get not a single interview between them for a next job when they are the very people who will become the consultants and teachers we need in the future, we wonder what has been going on in the Government and the Department of Health. That is not what I knew when my wife was working there.
	Incidentally, Philip Poole-Wilson was one of those people who switched careers; he did not start as a doctor. When, sadly, he died, there were 29 other professors of cardiology whom he had trained. That he achieved that by the age of 65 shows that if we allow people of distinction to achieve things, they can attract a group of people around them who can then go around the world and make enormous contributions.
	My last point on the NHS is to do with the national health service IT system. Every strategic health authority said that one of their hospitals must be a victim in order to bring in this new system, and, sadly, Worthing was chosen in my SHA area. The hospital tried to put that off for as long as possible, but when it came in, within six to nine months an extra £2 million had to be added to the hospital budget of £140 million a year to provide the clerical and manual back-up to substitute for the system that had been put in to replace the computer system it had, which was working, but was not working in the way in which someone, who has now left their job, up at Whitehall had imposed on them. That is terrible. Those £2 million could have been very usefully spent on some things that truly matter. When I thought of the doctors, nurses, administrators, managers and others in the hospital having to face that, knowing it was coming in and it would not work, I wept. It is not what the Government are supposed to be doing.
	The final topic that I wish to address is equality. I attended an important NATO Parliamentary Assembly meeting in Edinburgh over the weekend. At one point, on the platform were put a brigadier and three other officers, all of whom were women. After they made their presentations, it was time to make some contributions. I had been reminded of my first ministerial role at the Employment Department, when I was responsible for, among other things, equality and diversity. I asked why it was that in Departments in those days-we are going back 25 years now, to 1984-80 per cent. of first-line managers were female but two promotion grades later only 40 per cent. were female. In part, the answer to that is that there was an agreement-I call it a conspiracy-between the management and unions that staff had to serve a certain number of years before they could get a promotion. Secondly, they had a system where staff had to apply for promotion; people were not told, "We want you to go for this bigger and better job." The issue came down to the generalisation-it is no more than that-that most men who are half-qualified for something think they are over-qualified, and most women who are half-qualified think they are disqualified. The same applies normally-this is just a generalisation-to doing a good job; a woman doing a good job thinks it is a good reason to go on doing it, whereas a man doing a good job thinks it is a good reason to change and do something else. Some of these issues are cultural.
	We also had issues over race. I remember being questioned on the BBC Radio 4 "Today" programme about why racial discrimination in employment had not appeared to have improved very much. I pointed out that "Today" had 40 staff, not one of whom was black or Asian. I asked whether that was because they did not have the qualifications or somebody in recruitment was discriminating. I was on the show twice more in the next few weeks. I asked the same question, and I then got a letter from the director of personnel saying would I please stop exposing the BBC to scorn by asking questions, which seems an odd request to come from the BBC. It said it would have, in effect, an open access policy, under which people doing media training at the then polytechnic next door would get work experience, so people would no longer have to be called Dimbleby or Jay or something else to get an internship at the BBC, and the BBC has now changed. Therefore, being open and fair and giving people opportunity is what unites the education and health sides of this debate, and it is certainly the driving force behind my participation in public and political service.
	I hope that the Sir Christopher Kelly changes, whether modified or not, will not lead to the middle being excluded from participating in this place. I have a fear that we will have a Parliament of just the rich and the poor and not the people in between. We should also try to ensure we get the ordinary practitioner in medicine to think they might come into Parliament at some sacrifice and do well, and the average head of department of a good school, too-not to do better than they otherwise would in financial terms, but to make a contribution. Unless we make sure we do not exclude the middle, we will end up with a rather emptier Parliament.

Nigel Evans: Absolutely. I imagine that every constituency will have a number of families who are wondering how they will survive this Christmas. There might even be guilt on the part of some students, thinking that they will go back to university in January still having to rely on parental contributions so that they can eat and live. It is an absolute scandal. The Secretary of State said that more money is going into education, which is absolutely true, but this issue needs to be properly addressed.
	At least the Secretary of State cheered me up no end when he said that this is the last Queen's Speech of this Administration. In fact, this is the last November of this Administration; next month will be the last December; and then we will have the last Christmas of this Administration-until we finally get to the general election, which will further cheer me up no end. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing, West (Peter Bottomley), I will be working very hard indeed for a change of Administration, but I suspect that we have a half-open door to a general public who want such a change and to see fresh policies and ideas.
	Given the obesity time bomb in this country, the Government want more young people to get off the couch and participate in sport. We must do more to ensure that when youngsters go to school, they have the necessary facilities and time within the curriculum for sport. Sport must not be seen as the easy option, or something that they do instead of the serious work of academic education. Sport and a healthy lifestyle are vital to our youngsters, and in many senses this issue is relevant to the health arena. If youngsters participate in sport they will be healthier, and the health budget will probably thereby be less than if they were not doing sport, eating the wrong sorts of foods and leading very unhealthy lifestyles. This issue will have a huge health impact, so let us get it right now by investing in our youngsters through sport. Let us not treat sport as a Cinderella subject that is unimportant in schools. It is vital.
	I also mentioned to the Select Committee Chairman the question of youngsters, in the main, getting a bad press, which they do; I do not know why. I know that it is easier for journalists to pick on the very small number of young people who do bad things, and blow it out of all proportion, as if everybody under the age of 18 is a young thug waiting to pick on some unsuspecting member of the public and rob them, for example. That is clearly not the case. I am co-president of the British Youth Council and in my estimation, having talked to young people, the vast majority are really interested in what they are doing. They actually want to make a contribution to society, and a lot of them do tremendous charitable work, day in, day out, of which we read very little in the newspapers. I wish that there could be a deal or pact with young people so that, for every bad story that a newspaper carries about them, they also print a good one about some of the great things that some young people are doing in this country.
	Sometimes I hit the supermarket industry-I declare my entry in the Register of Members' Financial Interests at this point-for the way in which it forces down the amount of money that it is prepared to pay to the dairy industry, to give just one example. However, one thing that supermarkets do on education and training-I should mention Tesco and Sainsbury's in this regard-is operate the voucher scheme that provides computers and other equipment to a number of rural schools in my constituency that otherwise would not get access to them. I am sure that a number of MPs get the opportunity to present those goods to their local schools once a year, and I think that the scheme is fantastic; the gratitude, in particular that of small rural schools, is tremendous to see. If ever the supermarkets look to change the emphasis of that scheme, they could give shoppers an opportunity to donate their vouchers in store so that they could be reallocated to smaller, more rural schools, because the number of parents and grandparents collecting vouchers for those schools will be that many fewer. That is the one suggestion that I make to supermarkets.
	I shall briefly discuss health. On this morning's "Today" programme, we all heard that Nexavar, a drug that would help and prolong the life of those with advanced liver cancer, is not going to be provided to those people, who are suffering, thanks to the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. The reason given for their not being able to get the drug is that it costs too much. That is despite the fact that Cancer Research UK's chief clinician, Pete Johnson, says that the situation is enormously frustrating because people know how effective that particular drug is. Some 600 to 700 patients a year are affected by this. People who are suffering from cancer, and their families, are hearing that a drug is available that can prolong their life and are then being told that they cannot have access to it, despite that fact that people in Romania get access to it. What is so special about Romania that people there are able to get access to this drug when this advanced country, which is giving cohesion funds through the European Union to countries such as Romania, cannot give the same guarantee to its patients who are suffering and to the families who are suffering, in other ways, with them?
	I hope that we can reconsider which drugs are made available to the public. Where a drug could improve somebody's life, there must be a really compelling reason for it not to be made available here when it is available in other parts of the world. Money simply cannot be the only criterion-if it were, we could say that we are not going to provide all sorts of drugs and procedures because they cost too much.
	"N", "H" and "S" were the three letters missing from this Queen's Speech. As many hon. Members know, my mother died of clostridium difficile this year. I hope that when the Government, yet again, look at the procedures in place, they will place a special emphasis on tackling C. difficile and hospital-acquired infections. The number of death certificates mentioning C. diff increased each year from 1999 to 2007. In 2007, there were 8,324 such cases-an increase of 28 per cent. on 2006. Among death certificates mentioning C. diff, the percentage on which it was an underlying cause of death has been similar in each year, at about 55 per cent. The mortality rates in 2007 involving C. diff in the 85 and over age group were 3,429 and 3,396 per million of population for males and females respectively.
	There needs to be far more education of, and awareness among the public on this. C. diff is not the same as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. On MRSA, we clearly need to ensure that our hospitals are clean and that the deep cleansing that the Government promise is delivered, so that people who go into hospital with one condition do not come out with another or die in hospital from a hospital-acquired infection. Why, for things such as C. difficile, are prebiotics not made available as a matter of course to ensure that people with one sort of condition are not left so weak that they then pick up a hospital-acquired infection?
	I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in debating the last Queen's Speech of this Administration. We will all be going back to our constituencies at the end of this year and the general election campaign is fairly well started as it is. I am not surprised that a man who occupies the position of Prime Minister and takes 12 days to work out what sort of biscuit he likes dithers to a greater extent as to when the date of the general election will be. This Queen's Speech is a great wasted opportunity but, unlike the Lib Dems, I do not think that we ought to have spent the next few months trying to sort ourselves out. The only thing that will sort out Parliament and bring back the trust that people want to have in this institution is a general election. People widely expect one and the House that will come back will have at least 300 or so new Members. That new House will be elected with a mandate to clean up properly the arrangements for how this House should be working. Aside from the NHS, the other thing missing from the Queen's Speech was mention of something to deal with the legislation necessary to implement the Kelly findings; the Conservative party fully endorses those recommendations.

David Evennett: I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this debate on the Queen's Speech. I must say how much I enjoyed the speeches made by my hon. Friends the Members for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) and for Worthing, West (Peter Bottomley). Both of my hon. Friends gave us lots of ideas and things to think about as they covered areas of the Queen's Speech and the way forward on health and education. I am delighted to see the shadow Health Secretary on our Front Bench, because he has done so much for, and is so heavily involved in, health matters across the country. We very much hope that before long he will be responsible for the health of our country.
	In the final year of this Parliament, at a time when this country is suffering so greatly because of the economic recession, it would have been expected that the contents of the Queen's Speech would be constructive and would attempt to deal with the real major issues confronting us. Regrettably, that was not the case and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley said, the Queen's Speech was very thin. I wish to highlight the fact that the Government Benches are devoid of any Back Benchers or participants in this debate on a very important legislative programme. Where are the Labour Members? There is no one on those Benches, save a few Members on the Front Benches. The empty Benches reinforce the belief that Labour Members, too, think that this Queen's Speech is inadequate to meet the needs of the nation.
	In general, the Government's legislative programme appears to show that they have run out of ideas, and that this was a political speech and an attempt to save them at the general election. They will not succeed on that. They should be endeavouring to outline a programme to clear up the mess they have created over the past decade, be that in health, education, any other such matter or, more importantly, the economy. Too much of the programme in the Queen's Speech is, regrettably, partisan point scoring and is not about improving people's lives.
	I am disappointed that the Education Secretary is not here, because his speech highlighted what is wrong with the Government and with this Queen's speech. His contribution was partisan and, regrettably, it was not constructive. When I intervened on him, I endeavoured to suggest that on education we should be looking to work together to improve in the areas where we need to improve for the benefit of our children and our country. On this occasion, we need real change to create jobs, reform the health service, deal with our huge debt, put forward plans on immigration and offer real reform in schools. The Government have nothing to offer on ideas, vision or practical policies. Most of their measures have been window dressing.
	Two areas of great concern to my constituents and across my borough of Bexley did not get prominence in the Queen's Speech. In fact, some aspects of them were not mentioned at all. One is the NHS and the other is immigration. Cutbacks in our local NHS in Bexley, financial problems affecting our local hospitals, the closure of wards and the proposed permanent closure of the accident and emergency at Queen Mary's hospital, Sidcup are causing anger and concern in my area. My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) has come down to Queen Mary's to see the problems at first hand. We have a good hospital that is losing a facility that is much loved and much needed in my area. Obviously, we need reforms to the NHS to ensure that the system works better. We should not set our sights against change-we believe in change-but what we need is a new approach and I do not believe that this Labour Government can bring that new approach to the NHS or anything else.
	As for immigration, there needs to be a change in both the approach and the policy. There was nothing in the Gracious Speech on a subject that even the Prime Minister recently admitted in a speech was causing concern across our country. One might therefore have expected some mention of it in the Queen's Speech or some proposals. Regrettably, that was not so.
	Today's debate, of course, focuses on education and health-two of the most important issues to our constituents across the country. We all know that things need to improve and need to be better. Yes, money has gone in, but what are the results and the outcomes? That is what our constituents are looking for. I want to concentrate mainly on education today, and the Government's proposals are, I think, an admission of failure in education after 12 years in office.
	As a former teacher and lecturer, as well as a father, grandfather and school governor, I remain very concerned about the state of education and our schools in this country. So much for the 1997 Government slogan or mantra of "Education, education, education." We have had so many education Bills and so many reforms, yet we still have many problems. That is quite an indictment of failure for the Government.
	The Government have said that they believe that their new legislation will allow them to create world-class standards in schools, to listen to parents, to give them more information and to act to protect vulnerable children. These are commendable aims. We are all in favour of them and believe that they are vital. Why, after nearly 13 years, have we not achieved them? Why is still more legislation being introduced? The Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families should be ashamed, I think, of the Government's record in education.
	What will the new Children, Schools and Families Bill do? We heard a large number of interventions from the Secretary of State about the bureaucracy and the aims of the Bill to give guarantees to parents and pupils. That is commendable in principle-we want to see guarantees of good schools and a lot of these aims are worth while. The Opposition do not disagree with some of the principles, but we are concerned about the bureaucracy that will be created. Of course we want guarantees, of course we want parents to be more involved and of course we want teachers to be freed up from bureaucracy so that they are able to do their jobs. We want heads and schools to have more independence. Our proposals are not as unfettered as the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) tended to suggest, but we want to ensure that the professionals can get on with the job-whether they are in the health service or in education.
	Many of the measures in the Children, Schools and Families Bill are to be welcomed. Some are really good ideas. As my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families said in an impressive, entertaining and constructive speech, a lot of the parts of the Bill that we agree with are measures that we proposed that have now been taken over by the Government. Of course we welcome that fact-anyone welcomes a sinner who repenteth, and this Government have a lot of sins.
	Legally enforceable home-school contracts were an idea that we were very passionate about, proposed by the Conservatives. It is just a pity that it has taken the Government so long to come forward and accept them. Regrettably, however, the Government seem to be tinkering a lot with education rather than grasping the real need for school reform.
	Of course, we must deal with the worst and poorly performing schools as a matter of urgency. Children are being failed by the system and in 2009 that is not good enough. The majority of children who are failing the most are those in the more deprived and difficult areas, who have fewer opportunities. That cannot be acceptable and must be attacked as a top priority.
	In the longer term, the whole education system must be more responsive to parents. A system of legal guarantees, as proposed by the Government in their measure, could be expensive and time-consuming, and will not give parents more control over their children's education. We should be giving parents more real choice by opening up the system, not closing it down and introducing more and more bureaucracy.
	In his speech, my hon. Friend was positive about the need for educational reform. We need a radical approach to transform poor and failing schools-not more bureaucracy. The Conservatives have positive and radical ideas. We believe that there should be a new generation of independently run state schools. We do not believe that local authorities should have total control over our education system. In some areas, they have failed to take the initiative.
	I commend the local education authority in my borough of Bexley as innovative and good. We are looking towards even greater diversity. We have grammar schools, comprehensive schools and single-sex schools. We also have Church schools and some academies. The academy in Welling is doing well, and we hope that the new one in Crayford will open next September. The primary part of the school is already open-I had the privilege of opening it in July. We look forward to the innovative education at the school giving real opportunity to people in that part of my constituency. The Haberdashers' Aske's federation is behind the project and is to be commended for taking the initiative.
	Conservatives want passionately to smash down the regulatory barriers, such as planning guidance and building regulations, so that it is easier for new providers to open a school. Moving to a per capita funding regime, whereby new schools are paid if they attract pupils, and introducing a pupil premium to direct extra funding towards the poorest pupils must also be a way forward.
	We are keen on turning the best schools into academies, giving every school the opportunity to apply for academy status and extending the academy programme to primary schools. Forcing schools that have been in special measures for more than a year to be taken over by an excellent academy provider is a way of taking real action to improve schools that have been failing our children and communities. Giving parents the power to take over schools that local authorities want to close is another option for the future.
	We believe in giving schools greater freedom, but that must come alongside making schools more responsible to parents. In that way, we shall have better and more balanced education provision for every child, all over the country, not just those who happen to live in an area where there are already good schools.
	We want positive action. We shall look carefully at the pupil and parent guarantees of a legal right to a good education, but we have concerns. We believe that we need to free things up rather than increase bureaucratic regimentation and control, and to be much more effective at pushing up standards.
	Standards are the key. People should have the opportunity to be educated, to aspire and to develop to their maximum potential. Many of us are very grateful to the state schools we attended and to our teachers. They gave us opportunities to get on and make something of our lives. I am certainly grateful to the teachers at my primary school and grammar school.
	Teachers do a fantastic job. As my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing, West said in his excellent speech, teaching is a vocation. Teachers can really help pupils to develop. We should be grateful to people who go into that profession and give their lives to encouraging, enthusing and educating our young people. It is a tremendous career, but a demanding one. We should appreciate, too, the head teachers who give leadership and encouragement and set the benchmarks for their school. We believe in head teachers, teachers and parents, and we want more power for them, so that they can help improve standards, and can enthuse pupils and give them the necessary aspirations.
	I conclude with a short word on the Queen's Speech in general. There is very little in it-and, to be realistic, how many of the Bills that it mentions will be enacted by the time the election comes? I do not know. The Queen's Speech is a missed opportunity for a Government who, when they came in, promised so much, but who have delivered so little in nearly 13 years. They are political to the last, as they always have been. The speech was a regrettable missed opportunity to deal with the issues facing our country. Therein lies the Government's tragedy. I am sure that the electorate will pass their verdict on them in the near future.

Annette Brooke: I am very pleased to make a short contribution to the debate, which gives an opportunity to tie health and education issues together. Although a lot of legislation endeavours to do that, I think we are all aware of the huge gaps where children's services and health services are not working together as they should.
	I should like to speak about access to health services and subsequent outcomes for children and young people. The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman) mentioned child protection and said that even after a year of debate and after we have identified so much that needs changing in our children's services, it did not come up in the Queen's Speech-perhaps I should say that it is yet another such issue that did not come up. The problem has impacted greatly on the public and they certainly want to hear more about how we can tackle it.
	I have tabled amendments to a series of Bills to achieve provision of therapeutic services for all abused children, starting with the Bill that became the Sexual Offences Act 2003. Sadly, I have been unsuccessful so far, but most of my political life has been "Try, try again," so I have not given up yet. As an ambassador for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, I agree with its call for comprehensive post-abuse therapeutic provision for children in care, custody and refuges, and for children exhibiting sexually harmful behaviour.
	Child abuse remains an unacceptably large problem in the UK. An NSPCC study from way back in 2000 showed that 16 per cent. of children had experienced some form of sexual abuse, which may well have been by a parent or another relative. Other forms of abuse-physical or emotional or neglect-can also have a traumatic impact on children. In 2006, the then Department for Education and Skills said that of 60,000 children in care, 63 per cent. were there because they had experienced some form of abuse or neglect. Of course, in reality, the problems are likely to be much more widespread, because instances of abuse go unreported or because they are reported many years after they occur. The long-term consequences of child sexual abuse include anxiety and depression, anger and guilt, phobic reactions, substance abuse, difficulties functioning at school, poor self-image and difficulties with personal relationships and parenting.
	The Corston report in 2007 highlights criminality as a very real potential consequence of these problems, and it revealed that a high proportion of female inmates have a history of sexual abuse. Adults being treated for mental health problems often identify childhood abuse as an influence. Research shows that 25 to 40 per cent. of all alleged sexual abuse involves young perpetrators. The majority of those children and young people have been, or are being, sexually, physically or emotionally abused themselves.
	Therapy at an early stage could therefore help to reduce the scale of the problems over time by breaking the cycle. In addition, of course, it could save much money and anguish, and many troubled adults. Therapy can transform children's lives, but provision is inadequate and patchy across the country.
	A recent NSPCC report published just this year, "Sexual Abuse and Therapeutic Services for Children and Young People", concluded that the overall level of specialist provision is low, with significant gaps in provision both nationally and locally, and that there is a huge gap between the estimated need for services and service availability. The report identified potential shortfalls in provision ranging from around 51,000 to 88,000 therapeutic places. That is a massive problem.
	I was talking to a member of the NSPCC just yesterday about ChildLine, a service so important that I hope that all parties will say in their election manifestos that they will continue funding it. Young people who do not want to speak up face-to-face with someone do manage to contact ChildLine and explain what has happened to them.
	ChildLine also provides counselling services at the end of a telephone, and has allocated times when children and young people can ring in. Obviously, that is not as good as face-to-face counselling sessions but it is a start, as talking about these issues has to be a good thing. All the contacts made through ChildLine indicate how much a comprehensive service is needed.
	Specialist services are not only too few but are often offered too late, when a child or a young person is already showing symptoms of mental health or behavioural problems. There are very few services available for young people who have been raped or seriously sexually assaulted. Recently, a Victim Support volunteer from my constituency came to talk to me about the total lack of rape counselling in our area for young people under 16 who have been raped. It took an enormous amount of work to convince people that merely referring a person in those circumstances to a website was really not satisfactory.
	Not so long ago, I got a letter from a mother whose child, sadly, had been raped. The child had waited months for counselling, and I do not think that that is good enough. That may not be the most popular of items to talk about in relation to the Queen's Speech, but there are problems that we need to face up to and do something about.
	Finding resources to provide a comprehensive service will obviously be a problem in today's economic climate, but I should like to see at least a commitment to a strategy to make such services fully available in time. Preventive action that should be taken automatically now will save money and heartbreak in the long run.
	We need joined-up thinking. The new Department for Children, Schools and Families covers not only schools and children, but young people's health issues and youth justice. All those matters must be brought together when considering the need for therapeutic treatment. My last attempt to get the provision of therapeutic treatment included in legislation was on Report on the Children and Young Persons Act 2008. As I recall, the Government had agreed to amend the Bill to make provision for medical assessment for children taken into care. I tabled amendments to link the provision of therapeutic treatment to that assessment where appropriate. I was advised by the Bill Clerks that it was a DCSF Bill and that it would therefore probably not be possible to have an amendment accepted for debate which would place a monetary commitment on the Department of Health. Sure enough, my amendments were not selected.
	I should like to ask all the Ministers who have been present at some point during the debate what more can be done at national level to ensure that health and children's services are fully co-ordinated. We should not get the answer, "This is not my Department," if we are looking at the child as a whole. I made a similar plea for more therapeutic services two years ago in the Queen's Speech debate and was heartened by the response that I got from the then Secretary of State for Health, who said:
	"My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families and I will work together on children's health on a Joint Committee to try and join services up in the way that the hon. Lady seeks."-[ Official Report, 13 November 2007; Vol. 467, c. 637.]
	I do seek that, and I seek real movement on it before the general election.
	I recognise that the Government have invested in child and adolescent mental health services. There will never be enough money, but there has been considerable investment. However, that pot of money will not necessarily help the children about whom I am talking, because they may not have a diagnosable mental health condition, for example, and not all children and young people will wish to receive CAMH services.
	The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children delivers excellent programmes, and Action for Children is doing a lot of work with children in care, including running some pilots for the Government on the provision of therapeutic treatment. There is a lot of good work, but we need more. The Barnardo's report "Whose Child Now?", published just this week, identifies the need for better services in local authorities, to provide special support to children who are sexually exploited or at risk. We need more preventive work in all our local authorities to stop sexual exploitation and truly tackle trafficking rather than pretend it does not exist. When it sadly does happen, there needs to be appropriate treatment and counselling if young people are to be able to go on in life and fulfil their full potential.
	I congratulate the Secretary of State in particular on his commitment to supporting disabled children and their families, but I recently came across a local case in which there was a battle between the primary care trust and social services about who would pay for the support in overnight care that was necessary for a very sick child to be returned home from hospital and restored to his parents. The battle was acted out over four to six weeks, with the parents tragically in the middle. I hope that everybody is happy now, because three nights' support are being provided by the PCT and two by children's services, but why should the family have been in the middle of that tussle? That is one family, needing one set of services. Why cannot we do these things better?
	I wish to touch on maternity services, which are a local issue that the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) will also be concerned about. When we are talking about good outcomes for children and young people, we have to go back and get pre-birth services right. Equally, it is really important that mothers have a good experience at the time of the birth, because attachment to the baby, love and caring are all-important. If there is not a strong bonding, perhaps because of an unfortunate situation at birth, it can lead to all sorts of further problems. We have to get that right at this level.
	My granddaughter was born on Poole maternity unit just 16 months ago. Although it was a proud moment, I was shocked at the physical state of the buildings. A few months later, on a routine visit to the chief executive of Poole hospital, I mentioned that I had been deeply shocked. It had been many years since I had last been there, but clearly the buildings were outdated and it was difficult for staff to operate in such conditions. I was reassured at the time because I was told that everything was in hand for a new maternity unit to be built. That is long overdue and the existing buildings are past their sell-by date.
	Poole hospital is an important, main hospital serving a large area, including my constituency, and has really tackled the Government's agenda. It was recently awarded a double "excellent" rating. What more can we ask of an NHS hospital? It has been ranked as the safest hospital in the country, because of how it has tackled infections. We are not talking, therefore, about a badly managed hospital-quite the contrary. Yet problems have arisen with the funding for the new maternity unit. I make a special plea to the Minister to look into the matter. The unit is much needed in a hospital that has been managed extremely well.
	We are approaching the 20th anniversary of the signing of the United Nations convention on the rights of the child, and I am really disappointed that no one from the Department for Children, Schools and Families is here. The anniversary should be acknowledged in all debates today given that we are debating the Queen's Speech on health and education. That is really important. We have some wonderful programmes in our schools on the rights and responsibilities agenda put forward by UNICEF over the years. I am sure that many hon. Members will be visiting schools to celebrate the 20th anniversary.
	I make a plea to the Government: so much has been done and the Government are getting much better reports when they go to the United Nations and talk about the progress that has been made, but this country has not fully implemented the convention, despite being an early signatory. We need to care about, for example, children in detention and asylum seekers' children, and fundamental issues need to be addressed. As we face the 20th anniversary, we have much to celebrate, but we need to ensure that we put our children first and foremost.

Graham Stuart: The hon. Lady is absolutely right that the two issues-safeguarding children who might be at risk and ensuring a suitable education for all children-have been mixed up. As I say, the data on the safeguarding issue suggest that elective home education in and of itself is not a problem area, although there may be groups covered by that heading and certain children who need greater support. We do ourselves no favours by mixing up the two issues.
	The Badman report's recommendation 7 said:
	"That designated local authority officers should... have the right of access to the home".
	That right applies not after being given cause for concern or because the local authority has reason to believe that the child is not being properly educated or that the child is at risk or because of any issue whatsoever. This is a profound right to enter the home as the local authority sees fit. The recommendation also states that those officers should
	"have the right to speak with each child alone if deemed appropriate".
	The Badman review thus recommends that local authorities, some of which will have significantly let down the families and the children concerned by failing to tackle fully any under-performing schools or by leaving children and families traumatised and upset, should be given the right to march into the home to start monitoring and make an assessment of the child's education. That is fundamentally wrong and if the Secretary of State's intervention on the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) means that that will not happen, it is good news. I say to the Minister of State, Department of Health, the right hon. and learned Member for North Warwickshire (Mr. O'Brien), who is in his place on the Front Bench, that I would be most grateful if that assurance could be repeated in the summing-up speech. That would provide enormous reassurance to people.
	If we think about light-touch registration, it sounds perfectly reasonable at first. We do not want children below the radar or children who are not known to anyone-that is what moved the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole and one can go along with her on that. If, however, we look at the detail of how it might work, we need to think about what "light touch" actually means. Does it mean that there is a registration system at local authority level and that the local authority then does nothing with it, or are we going to ensure, as Badman recommends, that every child who registers is visited within one month of registration? Local authorities do not have the resources to provide for that, so I can easily see that instead of the scarce resources of local authorities being used to give support where it is most needed-to families that are crying out for the extra support-we will end up with a bureaucratic procedure whereby the limited, overstretched staff will be forced to go around visiting family after family after family even though there are no issues and no concerns.
	In the meantime, under a system that is supposed to ensure the provision of education and safety for children, what will actually happen-and it is typical of this new Labour Government, who are so wedded to bureaucracy and databases-is that the families most in need will be let down, because local authorities will not have the resources that would allow them to do something positive with the information that they are given. What else could happen? If local authorities obtain, in one way or another-from central Government or from their own resources-additional funds to invest in home education, and if we follow the Badman recommendations, we shall see local authority officers repeatedly entering homes and monitoring educational progress.
	A fundamental principle of our system of government has been that parents are responsible for delivering the education of their children. It is parents who should take the lead, not the state. I fear that this draft Bill may change fundamentally the relationship between the state and parents, and that from now on the overarching responsibility for the welfare and education of children will be assumed to rest with arms of the state. The state will have to come in and satisfy itself that local authority officers cannot be sued and that their defensive position is watertight. We do not want them to get into trouble, so if we follow the Badman recommendations, they will have the right to enter homes.
	I have another reason for asking the Minister to ensure that we hear a repetition of the Secretary of State's earlier pledge that local authority officers would not go into homes-if, indeed, I heard him aright. In June the Secretary of State wrote to Badman, saying that
	"LAs need greater powers to monitor...home educated children must be seen regularly in their education setting".
	That clearly suggests that local authority officers would go into the homes of home educators, but it also suggests that the Secretary of State fails to grasp the nature of much of home education. There is not necessarily a classroom in the home. Home-educated children are educated in libraries, in local leisure centres, in the park and when visiting country houses. They are educated everywhere, and a great deal of their education takes place on an autonomous basis: in other words, the child leads the education.
	Academics have studied this matter, including one at the Institute of Education in London. He said that he was sceptical at first, but has become convinced that autonomous education, including many of the alternative approaches adopted by home educationists, is tremendously effective, ensuring that children are educated in a way that is sympathetic to their needs and interests.
	I hope that the Minister will tell us what percentage of home-educated children the Government expect to register. Will only families in one place be pursued and possibly prosecuted? Will peripatetic families escape the net? How much will be spent on ensuring that all children, or as high a percentage as possible, are registered on the various local databases? And-this is a key question for many home educationists-should failing local authorities be allowed to decide what a suitable education looks like, when so many of their own schools and institutions are not delivering? Is that right? Is it right for the state to take away from families the overarching responsibility to ensure the education of their children?
	Why cannot the Government adopt a humbler approach? Why can they not invest more money in research, enabling us to gain a better understanding of who is not at school and who is being educated at home? Why can we not be given a better understanding of where problems might lie among electively home-educated people? Why can we not have a voluntary registration system, perhaps involving additional financial support for families educating children at home? The present position is absurd. A home educator told our Select Committee that one father had to pay £1,000 to cover the cost of GCSE exams taken by his daughter, although he was a taxpayer like the rest of us.
	Why do we have to go down the compulsory route? Why do this Government always think they know best? Why can they not work with people on a voluntary basis, build up the picture and then and only then-with a complete picture and a real understanding of the risks in respect of safeguarding and education-come forward with proposals, which might involve compulsory registration if there is due and proper cause. Due and proper cause does not currently exist, and I sincerely hope those aspects of the Children, Schools and Families Bill that deal with home education will not become law.

Lee Scott: There are not many occasions on which I agree with the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), but there is one issue on which I do: the importance of a national health service. Last night in my constituency, I held a meeting, and more than 200 people turned up to hear about the plans to cut accident and emergency and other services at the King George hospital. That hospital serves my Ilford, North, constituency and is based in the neighbouring constituency of Ilford, South. Not one person in the room, with the exception of the representatives from the primary care trust, thought that it would be a good idea to cut services in the accident and emergency department. Not one of the clinicians who came to see me beforehand thought that it was a good idea. The only people who said that it was a good idea were the people from the primary care trust who proposed it.
	I asked what would happen if someone was knocked down outside the King George hospital. I was told that even though it has an active accident and emergency service, they would not be seen there, but would be taken to Queen's hospital in Romford. That is a new hospital, and I am very happy that the people of Romford have it, but we have to look at what it has replaced. There was a hospital in Harold Wood; there was already a hospital in Romford; and there was the King George hospital. Now the proposal is for just one A and E department, based in Romford, to serve all my constituents.
	In the London borough of Redbridge, where my Ilford, North, constituency is located, there has been a lot of house building over the past few years, and more is taking place over the next few years. Those homes are needed, but where are the services that the people who live in them will use? Where will those people be taken if they are ill?
	Despite the fact that it has been a difficult year for every Member of this great House, I believe that one of the greatest honours that anyone can have is to serve as a Member of Parliament. When we are elected, we are elected to represent the people who put us here and their interests. That is what I pledged to do, and that is what I will continue to do while I have the honour of serving as the Member of Parliament for Ilford, North. To those ends, I ask, as I did earlier when I intervened on the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, the Government to intervene, to stop the proposals now and to impose a moratorium. I thank my party's Front-Bench spokesmen for saying that they support that. There should be a moratorium until after the general election, when what is best for the residents of Redbridge-for my constituents-can be considered and discussed outside a political forum.
	At last night's meeting, a member of the primary care trust said that he wanted the NHS to become like Marks and Spencer. Those were his exact words, and they will be reported in the local press, which chaired the meeting. He said that he wanted the success of Marks and Spencer to be repeated in the NHS, because it gave its customers what they wanted. Well, the customers of the NHS in the London borough of Redbridge do not want to lose their accident and emergency department. If it were lost, it would be the equivalent of Marks and Spencer saying, "This is our best-selling line, so we're not going to stock it any more." I urge the Government to make the intervention that I have requested, and in the winding-up speeches perhaps we will hear whether they are willing to do so and put a stop to the closure now.
	I shall move on to an education matter: the plight of children suffering from autism and Asperger's. There is a postcode lottery, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution for those children, who are some of the most needy in our community. In various debates over the years in which I have been in the House, I have called for the ring-fenced funding of education provision for children suffering from autism and Asperger's. The issue was not mentioned in the Queen's Speech, but I ask whether it, too, can be looked at under the heading, "Other measures". Those are the two points that I felt it vital to get across, and, on behalf of my constituents, I ask that they be listened to and acted on.

Bob Russell: You represent a Suffolk constituency, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and you share with the county of Essex the birthplace and home of the country's greatest landscape painter, John Constable. He, of course, is famous for his broad canvasses, but within them there is a great attention to detail, and later on I shall turn to that point. Government Ministers will be pleased to know that every Constable painting had a dash of red to attract attention- [ Interruption. ] And it has just worked.
	The Gracious Speech states:
	"My Government will work to build trust in democratic institutions...Legislation will be brought forward to introduce guarantees for pupils and parents to raise educational standards."
	It continues:
	"My Government will legislate to protect communities... My Government is committed to ensuring everyone has a fair chance in life and will continue to take forward legislation to promote equality, narrow the gap between rich and poor and tackle discrimination,"
	and that efforts will be made to
	"abolish child poverty by 2020."
	We are now in the 13th year of a Labour Government. In 1997, the number of children in child poverty was estimated to be 4.5 million, and after 12 years of a Labour Government-a new Labour Government-there are approximately 4 million children in child poverty. What a damning indictment of any Government that so many children live in child poverty. One only has to look at the efforts of Shelter to focus attention on the Government's failure to provide decent housing for all our people, despite having the world's fifth richest economy. After 12 years of a new Labour Government, they should hang their head in shame. Ministers are completely ignoring this speech, as they have ignored the plight of the homeless and of children for the past 12 to 13 years. What an indictment of any Government that they cannot even house their own people and can tolerate 4 million children living in poverty.
	In responding to the Loyal Address, the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition said:
	"A real Queen's Speech would not tinker with the education system, but would break open the state monopoly, allowing new schools to be set up and giving parents more choice."-[ Official Report, 18 November 2009; Vol. 501, c. 19.]
	Clearly, more choice must include the status quo in instances where the parents wish the status quo to remain. This is where I come to the detail in the broad John Constable landscape painting. Last May, in Children, Schools and Families questions, the Secretary of State said, in response to a question from me, that in respect of secondary school reorganisation in Colchester, Essex county council's preferred way forward was for Alderman Blaxill school and Thomas Lord Audley school to remain and operate as a trust. The following day, I had a meeting with the then Schools Minister and officials, in which we were given assurances that by September last year a federation of those two schools and Stanway school could be in place, under the executive headship of the inspirational head teacher, Mr. Jonathan Tippett.
	I regret to inform the House that within weeks Essex county council went back on that promise-the pledge that it gave to the Government and which was repeated here-and announced that it was going to close Alderman Blaxill and Thomas Lord Audley schools. Bearing in mind that Colchester is the fastest growing borough in the country, it said it would transfer the children to other schools, one of which, as we now know-it was never put in the public domain, but the leader of Essex county council has confirmed it to the leadership of Colchester borough council-would have to expand to 2,500 pupils. To the best of my knowledge, Conservative Front Benchers do not wish to have secondary schools of up to 2,500 pupils. Members may recall that I raised this issue two weeks ago at Prime Minister's Question Time. I should like to put on record my appreciation to the Prime Minister and to the Department, which is considering what I have said.
	The Government have referred, although not today, to the concept of super-heads, and I am grateful to the shadow Secretary of State for welcoming that proposal. I urge Ministers to reiterate the fact that it is Government policy to encourage the concept of super-heads. I was not too enthusiastic when I first heard about it, but one particular head, Mr. Tippett, has transformed Stanway school into arguably the best secondary school in Colchester-I have to say "arguably" because other schools may disagree. He has transformed Thomas Lord Audley from a failing school to one that last year produced the best exam results in its history, sailing past the Government's artificial target of a 30 per cent. pass rate. In September this year, the number of pupils joining at year 7 was the highest for many years; and this at an allegedly failing school in a town of falling rolls. The numbers simply do not add up.
	I will turn to Building Schools for the Future and Partnerships for Schools in a moment. I am not in the business of wasting public money- [ Interruption. ] If those on the Government Front Bench will give us the courtesy of listening to the debate, I would like to ask a question. This is rudest display I have witnessed in 12 years in this place-Ministers are simply not listening to the debate. That is discourteous to the House, to me and to my constituents. I am grateful that one Minister is now listening.
	My question is this: where is the capital funding for the further education sector? For more than 100 colleges around the country-although not 13 or 14 in Labour-held seats-money has been stopped. Building works were promised and were under way, but the guillotine fell. I have a further education college in my constituency that is a building site. We need an explanation for that.
	Why, after 12 years of a new Labour Government, is funding per student in sixth-form colleges less than the funding per head in a school sixth form? There are two selective schools in my constituency. Funding for their students is greater than the funding per head for students attending the successful Colchester sixth-form college, which is arguably the most successful sixth-form college in the country. We need an upward equalisation so that students at all sixth-form colleges, of which there are more than 100 across the country, are treated on the same basis as students attending school sixth forms.
	The Chairman of the Children, Schools and Families Committee, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), referred to the Education Act 1944. I encourage Ministers, their advisers, researchers and experts, to look at that Act, because in the midst of war, politicians from all parties realised that something better for the young people of this nation was called for. The Act was about more than just teaching in the classroom. It was a passport for young people for future generations. It was for education, but it also dealt with social matters, through the school meals service, and, linking with the health aspect of the debate, it introduced medical, eye and dental checks. If this Government, or any Government, could get back to the ethos and principles of the 1944 Act, many aspects of the health problems in this country would be addressed. I urge the Minister to look at the thinking behind the Act and the cross-party consensus that brought it about.
	By happy coincidence, today is the seventh anniversary of my presenting to the House the First Aid Training in Schools Bill under the ten-minute rule. I urge this Government, or any Government, to think about that measure. If our young people, from the age five upwards, were given first aid training in schools, they would automatically learn every aspect about themselves-good eating and healthy lifestyles as well as the dangers of excess smoking, taking illegal drugs and substances, obesity and so on. That would bring together health and education and dramatically reduce the number of people who end up at accident and emergency departments who, frankly, should not be there.
	I referred to the extraordinary behaviour of Essex county council and intervened on the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove). When the Essex county council consultation went out to the good people of Colchester, 96 per cent. said no to the proposals. We had the extraordinary situation about 18 months ago that education officials-the professionals-were putting forward a case for closing two schools and amalgamating them on one site as an academy. However, they were told by their political master-the person who took over the education portfolio after he had dispensed with the previous post holder's services-that both would shut. The schools would not be amalgamated, and the children were to be shipped away. The Tory leader of the county council said to me, "I've got to get those children off those estates so that they can be taught with the children of more aspirational families."
	What a gross insult to the people on the Berechurch, Shrub End, and Greenstead estates! The leader of the county council was saying that it was all right for children to live there, but that they would have to be removed for teaching between the hours of nine and four, or whatever, when they could be shipped back. That is not on. I am not having any part of my constituency treated in that way. I am looking to the Government to deliver that part of the Queen's Speech which is about not being a party to discrimination.
	However, we know that the county council's figures do not add up. As I said, Colchester is the fastest growing borough in the country, and I am grateful to a parent, Mr. Joe Slatter, who is the father of twins at a local primary school. He has done his own research, based on the county's figures, and he told me this morning that Essex county council will run out of secondary school places because the number of primary school places required is soaring.
	There are 600 extra primary school pupils in Colchester today than Essex county council originally planned for-the equivalent of an entire primary school, and a bit. One new primary school opened in September, and two more are planned. The town is growing-booming-but the county council proposes to shut the two secondary schools in the south of the town, with the children to be shipped elsewhere. That is all part of a £130 million expansion programme for existing schools.
	Where is the parental choice when 96 per cent. of those who respond to a consultation say, "We don't want these two schools shut"? I know that I am having a pop at the county council, but I am looking to the Labour Government-the Government of the day-to ensure that my constituents get fairness and justice.
	There is a nice little aside to this: because of the Conservative party's absurd policies in my town, Colchester is one of the few places in the country where the Tories have lost ground in the borough and county elections held over the past two years. They lost five seats and control of the council last year, and they just managed to hold one of their county council seats this year, although their majority was slashed by more than 1,000 to just 19. We nearly had a clean sweep, so in political terms I am grateful to Essex county council Conservatives for all that they are doing.
	According to my constituent Mr. Joe Slatter, it is forecast that by 2014 there will be an additional 1,561 primary school pupils. My experience is that primary school children usually tend to become secondary school children, but that figure is based on the children who we know are already born and breathing and does not take account of the massive new house building programme. I accept that that is temporarily in abeyance, but at my advice surgery on Friday I had my very first parent from the new housing being built on the old garrison. That person cannot get a child into either of the two nearest schools because they are both full up. We already know the numbers that will be involved, and the Government must intervene.
	I welcome investment in education in my town. We all do, but that is the broad picture and I want to explore the detail. I do not support wasteful public expenditure. In the current economic climate, there is no guarantee that the £130 million that the county council has talked about will materialise. Members of the Conservative administration in the county council want to rush the closure project through, and the irony is that they are doing so because they fear that there will be cuts if their party forms the next Government.
	I find that ironic. There is no guarantee that the £130 million will materialise, and in any event it would be much cheaper to the public purse, in both capital and revenue terms, if the two threatened schools remained open and serving their local communities, because several hundred thousand pounds a year will be needed to transport youngsters. The journeys will be 2 to 3 miles in the case of my constituents, but in the case of those in the neighbouring constituency, they will be tortuous 14-mile journeys across country from West Mersea on the island of Mersea across to Tiptree. They are not my constituents, so I cannot speak for them, but I can speak for my constituents, who do not want their schools shut.
	There is now clear evidence that the Office of the Schools Adjudicator should investigate the situation. Unfortunately, getting the matter before it is virtually impossible. A Member of Parliament cannot do so, nor can Colchester borough council, but I hope that the Government can say to the OSA, "Please investigate these figures, because they do not add up." We know that there will be a shortage of secondary school places in Colchester. The capital sum required for the secondary schools reorganisation under Building Schools for the Future could be dramatically reduced by retaining the Alderman Blaxill and Thomas Lord Audley schools. It is agreed that the Sir Charles Lucas secondary school in the north of the town needs to be replaced. I do not agree that it should be replaced with an academy, but I can park that argument for today. I urge the Government to refer the whole Colchester secondary school reorganisation proposal to independent review by the OSA.
	Incidentally, I understand that the county council is not so sure of its case anyway. In a letter that I have with me from the leader of Essex county council to the leader of Colchester borough council, he tries to explain what would happen if a new access road were not provided to one of the secondary schools. I find it hard to believe that the whole future of a £130 million Building Schools for the Future project depends on an access road being put across a piece of public open space.
	Earlier this month, the Minister for Schools and Learners wrote to the leader of Colchester borough council, stating:
	"Partnerships for Schools...has not yet had any formal discussions with Essex County Council about its plans for the Colchester schools".
	Interesting. In a letter to me dated three days later, 12 November, Partnerships for Schools stated that
	"to the best of our knowledge there has been no communication between Essex County Council and Partnerships for Schools with regard to the new access road...Partnerships for Schools has yet to engage formally with Essex County Council on the development of these proposals."
	There was then confirmation from the leadership of Colchester borough council that the leader of Essex county council had told them that the Philip Morant school would need to expand to up to 2,500 pupils.
	In an open and democratic society, we cannot have Essex county council or any council proceeding on figures that have been massaged or claims that do not stand up to examination. For example, it has put forward the case for the BSF expenditure on educational grounds, yet I am told that Colchester has the sixth highest GCSE results of all the parliamentary constituencies in Essex and is above the Essex average.
	What is going on? I believe that what is going on is that Colchester is the only local authority area in the whole county of Essex that is not run by the Conservatives. The inspirational leadership of Mr. Jonathan Tippett has turned around not one, not two but three secondary schools. He is exactly the sort of executive head or super-head that the Government say they want. There is already a guy there doing it, so let him do it.
	If necessary, why can the Government not remove those three schools from Essex country council? That is what the population wants. It has no confidence or trust in the council or its officers, who, 18 months ago, made a case to justify amalgamating two schools, but who were then obliged, because of a direction from the political leadership, to do away with two schools. They then came forward with arguments that are now rapidly unravelling. I urge the Government to consider the details of the situation, because it is not acceptable.
	In conclusion, I point out that the leader of Essex county council is also a shadow Minister in Her Majesty's Opposition in the other place.

Andrew Lansley: I am grateful to have the opportunity to respond to this interesting and, in many respects, good debate.
	My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition, and the Prime Minister, at the start of their responses to the Gracious Speech, talked about the recent losses in Afghanistan. Last Sunday, Rifleman Andrew Fentiman, from my constituency, died in Helmand province, so is now among those whom we have lost. His lieutenant, Lieutenant Heap from 7th Battalion the Rifles, said of him:
	"He died alongside his friends doing a job he loved".
	That says something powerful about the nature of the young people serving in Afghanistan. It should also further reinforce our determination to ensure that they have every support they need-by support, I mean not just equipment and other physical support, but moral and political support for their job in Afghanistan. I want to express our deepest sympathies to Andrew Fentiman's family in my constituency.
	It has been an interesting debate. The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) told us about education in Colchester. He was right to instance Rab Butler in the 1944 Education Act, and in doing so he struck a note in harmony with that of the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), who was one of only two Members to speak from the Government Back Benches, but who, in talking at the outset about the history of education policy, and the consensus, in many respects, on it, struck a powerful contrast with the Secretary of State, who sought not a consensus, but only to create his own absurd self-styled dividing lines, the purpose of which clearly is to manipulate educational policy for party political advantage. As far as I can tell, it comes to nothing.
	Indeed, much of the Queen's Speech seems to have been constructed around party political opportunism, rather than public interest. That is a great pity, because we have talked today about two subjects-education and health-in which often, in the midst of debating, we find that we have shared objectives. We might have differences of opinion about the means by which those objectives can be met, but so often we have shared objectives and sometimes, as it turns out when we get into the debate, a great deal of commonality on what some of the underlying mechanisms should be.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Worthing, West (Peter Bottomley) echoed what he had previously said we should see in the speech from the hon. Member for Thurrock (Andrew Mackinlay). He touched on a range of subjects, but in all respects was interesting, brief and to the point. In particular, I was struck by what he and-in an interesting speech-my hon. Friend the Member for Bexleyheath and Crayford (Mr. Evennett) said about education. They highlighted the importance of the quality of teaching. My hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) said from the Front Bench that the quality and status of teachers is central to the improvement of education.
	If I may digress for a personal moment, my two hon. Friends reminded me in their speeches that 12 and a half years ago, shortly after I came here, my old politics teacher at Brentwood school in Essex retired. He visited Parliament for tea, and there were four of us who gave it to him: two Labour Members-the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr. Straw) and the hon. Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Hamilton)-along with myself and our former hon. Friend Howard Flight, the then Member for Arundel. Our teacher had taught us all politics and inspired two Labour Members and two Conservative Members, which struck me as an admirable illustration of his capacity as a teacher. There were no Liberal Democrats, I hasten to add, as he was clearly a man whose inspiration to the art of politics obviously had all the right effects.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr. Evans) echoed the point that was made by the hon. Member for Huddersfield about young people getting a bad press. He also touched on an important health issue. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has said in a decision-I hasten to add that it is a provisional decision-that it does not propose to recommend sorafenib as a drug for primary liver cancer, which is a very serious disease. Only about 5 per cent. of those diagnosed with primary liver cancer are alive five years after diagnosis. There has been an increase in the number of people with primary liver cancer of about three and a half times in the past 30 years, so the issue is important. Even though it may have limited effects, sorafenib is recognised as the only drug of its kind available for treatment, as most patients at that stage will be beyond surgery.
	If the Government are talking about guarantees, as they are in the context of patients' rights in the NHS, we have to find a means by which patients recognise that they have guaranteed access in the NHS to the treatment that they need when they need it. With sorafenib, of course it is unacceptable for pharmaceutical companies to have limitless opportunities to produce new drugs and simply ask the NHS to pay any sum of money. That is why I have made it clear that it will be our intention, the electorate permitting, to move to a system of value-based pricing in the NHS, so that the reimbursement price to pharmaceutical manufacturers should reflect the value of that medicine-the therapeutic value, the innovative value and, where appropriate, the wider value to society.
	On that basis, the question should never be, "Should this drug be available on the national health service?" if it is licensed and effective; rather, that drug should be available for patients, and clinicians should have access to it. Then the argument will be between us and the pharmaceutical companies about what the appropriate reimbursement is. However, if we all genuinely believe that patients must come first, we must ensure that they have access to the medicines that they need, so I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley for making that point.

Andrew Lansley: Where is he now? I do not know. Perhaps he is somewhere in a corridor outside the Council of Ministers in Brussels-who knows? Three years ago, Tony Blair as Prime Minister said that there were drivers of reform in the national health service and that practice-based commissioning was going to be one of them. It stalled. The national clinical director for primary care at the Department of Health said the other day that practice-based commissioning was a "corpse" that was "not for resuscitation" and was
	"certainly not seen as a major vehicle for change".
	Payment by results, instead of payment by activity, is an absolutely instrumental process in trying to deliver the services we need in the NHS. It needs to be introduced and it needs to be reformed. It has stalled. Progress has not been made to the extent that it should have been. The Government literally took their feet off the accelerator on payment by results simply because they did not realise that it was bound to have an impact on the distribution of resources between hospitals. What they should have done is to move faster to a much more effective payment-by-results system that accurately reflected the costs of different procedures.
	Payment choice is supposed to have been offered by April 2008, yet the latest patient choice survey shows that still fewer than half of patients feel that they have been offered any choice, while foundation trusts were supposed to be another driver of reform. Last year there were 28 new foundation trusts and there were 28 in the previous year; this year, there have been eight so far. The Health Bill of the last Session before prorogation showed the Government moving towards trying to de-authorise foundation trusts rather than to authorise more of them.
	On the independent sector, the NHS should be open to new providers, which is also important, as my hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath made clear, in the schools context. The Government have gone into reverse. Instead of having a policy of any willing provider who will meet NHS standards within NHS prices, which is the policy that we have consistently argued for and I thought that the Government had accepted, the Secretary of State writes a letter to the general secretary of the Trades Union Congress announcing a U-turn, saying that the NHS is going to be a preferred provider. Frankly, he was saying, social enterprises and the independent sector can go hang. The right hon. Member for Darlington (Mr. Milburn), who is not in his place, described this as "a deeply retrograde step". He said:
	"If we are going to drive efficiency, productivity and quality on the scale required, the last thing you do is renew a monopoly and say your existing provider is your preferred one."
	So the former Secretary of State, who launched the NHS plan that the Government were supposed to be pursuing, himself says that the Government have abandoned the process.
	The only thing that the Government did not include in the Queen's Speech-although they had previously suggested that it would be included-was the idea that their targets should be turned into guarantees. The guarantees to which they have referred do not seem to be the kind of guarantees described by the Secretary of State for Education; they are narrow-process guarantees.
	The NHS equivalent of the education guarantee would be "All patients should have access to good-quality treatment when they need it, where they need it, and from the person from whom they wish to receive it." That is the sort of guarantee that we are seeking, but it is not the guarantee being offered by the Government. The Government's narrow-process target suggests that if a patient receives treatment within 18 weeks that is good enough, but there are many patients for whom it is not good enough. There are many patients whose maximum waiting time should relate to their condition and circumstances. Just as education should be built around the individual needs of children, health care treatment should be built around and assessed according to individuals' health care needs.
	Because of the way in which the Government's target approach works, hospital clinicians often find that the bureaucracy has ordained that patients who have been referred should not see a consultant for eight weeks, and that a decision can be made after that. The consultant will suddenly find that a referral has been made without his or her knowledge, and that it relates to a patient who should have been seen on a more urgent basis. The problem is that patients are treated as if they were on a production line rather than on the basis of their clinical priorities. Identifying clinical priorities is central to providing patients with good-quality treatment in the future, although, in the case of many patients, that does not preclude the provision of quality indicators demonstrating the standard of treatment that should be provided. What I am saying-we have been saying it for a very long time-is only exactly what the Secretary of State himself said in January 2007. He said then:
	"Overall, from 2009, there should be fewer national targets...Targets and priorities should be set locally wherever possible, within national service frameworks and national standards such as those set by NICE."
	We are looking for quality indicators set by NICE-the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence-making it clear what should be the basis of a contract between the commissioners and the providers of health care services. When the Government talk about legally enforceable rights, what they mean is that, through the contracts, patients should have access to the rights to treatment that are specified in the contract between commissioner and provider. That is exactly what we are talking about, and that is the kind of guarantee that we should be talking about. What we need in future is for patients to know what are their entitlements to treatment, and to know that those entitlements are reflected in the commissioning undertaken by their GPs on their behalf. The Government's "legal entitlement" is no such thing. What they are describing is simply an expression of a wish in the NHS constitution-a wish that, if it is to become a reality, must be turned into the contracts made between commissioners and providers.
	As I have said, the Government talk of guarantees, but where is their guarantee of access to the medicines that patients need at the point at which they need them? Where is their guarantee that patients will have access to a "zero tolerance of infection" environment in hospitals? We may talk of waiting times, but there is clear evidence that patients also want-perhaps want even more-to know that they are entering an environment in which they are much less likely to acquire an infection. The Government have not offered that guarantee, and, in fact, the number of MRSA infections acquired by people in hospital is now three times higher than it was in 1997.
	Where is the Government's guarantee of access to choice in maternity services or in end-of-life care? Where is the guarantee of access to local accident and emergency services to which my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford, North referred? If the Government are talking about guarantees and access, why are those kinds of access completely left out? If we then go down the path of making sure patients have such access, and we focus on the degree of quality that needs to be built into decisions on the purchasing of health care, we can concentrate on the outcomes. We can then move beyond the narrow targets that have been the obsession of this Government and that have distorted clinical priorities-and that in places such as Stafford have led, frankly, to the death of many patients who were discharged from accident and emergency departments on to wards to languish and to die. We can then also start to make up the difference between where we are and where we need to be in respect of so many of our key, great public services, including education and health.
	There remains a persistent and unacceptable gap between the quality of outcomes achieved in this country and those achieved in some of the leading countries elsewhere in the world. In respect of health, since 1997, despite increasing spending threefold-as the hon. Member for Bolsover said-our ranking among European countries on deaths from disease has slipped from ninth to 10th. More people die in this country from diseases that are amenable to health care than the average for Europe. We have fallen behind other countries in our deaths from cancer rates, too. Deaths from lung disease-such as mesothelioma, which the hon. Gentleman talked about-are 75 per cent. higher in this country than the European average. People in the United Kingdom are twice as likely to die prematurely from a heart attack than in the best performing country in Europe, which is France. That is where we need to be. We must have the ambition to have the best outcomes in Europe-not just to spend as much as other countries in Europe, but to have outcomes that are at least as good as any in Europe.
	I want to mention two other important matters. First, the Government have announced this afternoon that they will extend the swine flu vaccination programme to the main carers of those who are very vulnerable and living at home, which I welcome, and to children aged between six months and five years. I welcome that, too; indeed, I have been making it clear to the Secretary of State for some considerable time that, as has been the situation in America, there is a good case for extending the vaccination programme to young people on the grounds of the evidence that is emerging of the much higher likelihood of young people who do not have existing underlying health conditions having complications from swine flu. The debate continues, and the Secretary of State has advised that the Government do not-yet-support a school-based vaccination programme, but I none the less think it is right for us to proceed in this way for very young people and to give positive consideration as to whether in the new year, when the vaccine is available and the existing priority groups have been substantially dealt with, we should move on to offer vaccination to young people up to the age of, let us say, 24 or 25, in recognition of how many of them are hospitalised when they have swine flu and the pressure that there is on paediatric intensive care. I also join the Government in hoping that those who are offered vaccination will take it up, especially those working in the NHS and social care, and pregnant women given what we know about the risk of complications for them. There has been much inappropriate comment about the speed at which this vaccine has been made available, when we know the technology on which it is based is a proven technology that has been used in seasonal flu vaccines over many years and that there is no reason for people to resist it on this basis.
	The Queen's Speech proposes a personal care at home Bill. Last July, the Government, after having pursued for a very long time the idea that there should be a long-term consensus on social care-my colleagues and I had often made efforts to join in such a consensus, but the Government ignored that-published their Green Paper; they proceeded without such a consensus in place. What is subsequently astonishing is that, as Lord David Lipsey tellingly described it, they have even fired an Exocet at their own flagship. The Prime Minister has shot right through their own Green Paper by putting a further proposal forward that was not even in the Green Paper, and I understand that David Lipsey's view is that it runs counter to what ought to be the long-term consensus for a more comprehensive social care plan, because it would provide free personal care for a small minority of care users living at home with highest need, abandoning those with lesser care needs, but who, frankly, have seen local authority support to them diminishing. About 600,000 fewer people are now accessing local authority-arranged support in the moderate and lesser care need categories. So everything is being focused on the highest care need, but that does absolutely nothing for people in very high care need who go into long-term residential care.
	The Prime Minister says, as Tony Blair did 13 years ago, that he does not want to live in a country where people have to sell their home to pay for care. Why does he think that happens? It happens because people go into long-term residential care when their home becomes at risk as a consequence of the means test, the cost of care rises dramatically and their homes have to be sold to pay for it. According to the latest estimate, 47,000 people a year still have to sell their homes to pay for care. Frankly, it is outrageous for the Prime Minister to publish an article suggesting that his proposal in the Queen's Speech yesterday will do anything about that; it will do nothing. Those going into long-term residential care will not be supported at all, and as David Lipsey rightly points out, sometimes it is necessary, right and in their own best interests for people to be admitted to long-term residential care.
	We do need to establish a long-term consensus on social care. In the light of the speeches that I and my Conservative colleagues have made, not least to the national children and adult services conference in Harrogate, such a consensus is available. However, it is not available on the basis of scrapping attendance allowance and disability living allowance for those over 65, but on the basis of prevention. Yesterday's proposal-the Government followed us in proposing resources for reablement and enablement through prevention-is a step in the right direction. We need to do more on assistive technologies and on home adaptations and prevention.
	The second principle is personalisation of care. More than 2 million older people with disabilities and needs are receiving attendance allowance of £60 a week on average, or disability living allowance of £75 a week on average. The Government's Green Paper proposals would take that away in order to pay for their national care service. Frankly, that is not acceptable. If personalisation of care is right, and it is, such people need to maintain access to cash benefits that they can use to support their care needs as they see fit. In particular, that means cash benefits that they can use to support family and informal carers.
	We support a national care service, which the Government are proposing; what we oppose is a nationalised care service. Instead of personal care and local authority involvement, the Government want to turn such a service into something driven only by bureaucracy and the state. As my colleagues made clear in their contributions, we have to listen to people; we have to let people make choices. We have to give patients, care users and parents the opportunity to control their public services. So we oppose the Government's nationalisation proposal; instead, we are in favour of creating a national care service through which people can access a common assessment that can be transferred around the country. That way, they will know they have support for keeping them independent at home and the ability to manage budgets on their own behalf, while getting the care they need. They will also know that, through our home protection scheme, they can buy into an insurance policy that means they genuinely will not necessarily face the threat of selling their homes to pay for long-term residential care.
	The Government's "dividing lines" are an absurd political gimmick. What we actually have, as the Lord President of the Council and First Secretary of State-and grand panjandrum-describes it, is a choice. We have a choice between, on our part, ambitions for our national health service, or atrophy of reform on the Government's part. We have a choice between radical reform in education to deliver higher standards, or reactionary politicking by the Secretary of State. We have a choice between a future Government who are committed to our public services and to practical and workable solutions, and a Government who have run out of ideas and are using the public services as no more than a political football. We are committed to achieving the quality of public services that people have a right to expect, and not least to achieving the outcomes that will make our public services among the best in the world.

Andy Burnham: We have heard many important contributions this afternoon and I shall respond to them in a moment. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Mr. Lansley) spoke very movingly about his constituent in Afghanistan. Speaking for the Government, I wish to share our condolences with him and his constituent's family. The hon. Gentleman talked of moral and political support being important and the best thing we could provide. I share that view wholeheartedly.
	At the beginning of my contribution, I wish to set out the broad context for today's debate. Some 10 years ago, our crumbling hospitals and schools were a national embarrassment and were failing patients and parents, but today, after a decade of investment and reform, they are substantially rebuilt and provide a good service to the public; no longer are they the poor relation in Europe and the world; they instead receive accolades on the world stage. The respected US-based The Commonwealth Fund has tracked the progress in our NHS and, two weeks ago, it said that England had one of the best-if not the best-primary health care systems in the world. That is not only a huge tribute to all the staff who work in primary care in our constituencies and a particular tribute to the work of general practitioners-perhaps we do not praise them enough-but it is an endorsement of the Government's reform programme.
	The UK and England were ranked first of the 11 countries surveyed, which included Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand and the US, on the following criteria: low waiting times for specialist care; the use of multidisciplinary teams; the use of financial incentives to reward patient experience; the quality of clinical care; the management of chronic diseases; the use of data on patient experience; the reviewing of doctors' clinical performance; and the benchmarking of clinical performance. We were given that outstanding record of achievement in Washington.
	The evidence for that transformation in primary health care can be found in my constituency; we had a world of too few GPs working out of terraced houses, but we now have modern premises with more GPs providing a wide range of services to the public. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families would agree when I say that primary education has undergone a similar transformation to that of primary health care services. Our schools are now a joy to visit and are unrecognisable from the shabby and depressing buildings of 15 years ago. The primary heads in Leigh tell me that they have resources that they could once have only dreamed of. Through investment and reform, our public services have gone from poor to good-now the challenge is to make them even better.

Andy Burnham: A few minutes ago, the hon. Gentleman asked where the choice was in end-of-life care. I have launched a consultation on extending to people the right to die at home. Where was he before I proposed that right? I did not hear him calling for it. I have opened that consultation-if people want to make that argument I will listen to it, but it is the Government who are making the proposals. We are also saying that people should have the right to access a personal health budget and to have more control and power over their health care.
	The NHS constitution, which was recognised in law just last week, sets out the rights of patients to guaranteed waiting times. Again, we are consulting on this. Waiting lists should be 18 weeks for elective treatment and two weeks to see a specialist for suspected cancers. Let me get a few things straight today. The Leader of the Opposition said yesterday from the Dispatch Box that the Conservative party first proposed the NHS constitution, but the first mention of it in any Tory document was in June 2007-a full nine months after I proposed the creation of an NHS constitution in a pamphlet in September 2006. Check the facts.
	There have been complaints today that there is no NHS legislation. Only last week, the Health Act 2009 received Royal Assent. Let us take that further immediately, by taking patient rights further-the consultation I mentioned a moment ago.
	Let us get to the main point: the complete and utter confusion on the Opposition Benches about our proposed patient rights. The shadow Health Secretary has constantly said that he opposes the targets that form the basis of our proposed rights-the 18-week target and the two-week cancer target-and has said that he prefers outcome targets. Right or wrong? He has consistently opposed those targets?

Andy Burnham: The hon. Gentleman has been found out. I am sorry to disappoint my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Mr. Prentice), but I am not proposing what the shadow Health Secretary suggests. I can stand making a tough decision. I can say, "This is saving lives; I will stand by it," but the hon. Gentleman wanders round constituencies with candidates wearing rosettes, promising the earth. He does that not just in Burnley, but in my patch, Greater Manchester, where we have had a difficult review of maternity services. He goes round Greater Manchester promising to reopen everything. Does he remember the leader in the  Manchester Evening News that promised that babies' lives would be saved? Does he remember the review? Has he looked at the clinical evidence? Has he heard the views of clinicians about that reconfiguration?
	The hon. Gentleman today claimed in the House that clinicians should decide where services are placed, yet he wanders round the country with Conservative candidates, opposing every clinically led decision in the land. That is not a credible position to take. He says that he wants patient choice, but would allow general practitioners to reverse extended opening hours. To cap it all, the Conservatives say that they want a bonfire of the quangos, but then pledge to have an independent board for the NHS; that would turn it into the biggest quango in the world. It is dangerous for a Labour Minister to quote "The Thick of It", but under the hon. Gentleman, Tory health policy really is turning into an omnishambles.

Andy Burnham: I take the hon. Gentleman's point on LINks-that we probably have more to do to give them a higher profile, and that we have to work harder to make them more effective. However, I urge him to work through the all-party group that the hon. Member for Wyre Forest chairs to see whether we can make progress in that regard.
	There is growing evidence that NHS IT is making a genuine difference to patient safety, with more responsive services throughout the country. Again, I am not complacent, because I am sure that we can make further improvements, but the Opposition use an easy stick when they say that it is all a waste. In fact, it is not: it is producing real patient benefit, and I am pleased with the progress that we are making.
	The hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) raised the question of maternity services, as did the hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms). I shall look at the matter, and I acknowledge the strength of feeling about it. The matter was voiced by two hon. Members in the area, so I shall consider it. If I am not mistaken, however, the hon. Lady recognised the improvements that have been made in the NHS in the past 10 years, and I am grateful for that.
	The hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) made many points about Building Schools for the Future and his frustrations with the process, and I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister for Schools and Learners heard them. The hon. Gentleman also questioned the funding of school sixth forms and complained that they are not the same, so I should tell him that my brother is a vice-principal of a sixth-form college and regularly lobbies me on the matter. I should probably say no more than that.
	Several hon. Members mentioned home education, including the hon. Members for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) and for Beverley and Holderness (Mr. Stuart). I agree with the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness in saying that home education is a well-established and important part of our education system. He asked us to recognise the contribution of people who give lots of their time and effort in raising the standards of home education. A constituent who recently came to see me-Caroline Shevalan-made the same point, and I am happy to endorse it. It is important that there is certainty, with good processes and standards in place. Registration and monitoring of home education will not be onerous-home educators are doing a good job-but it will give local authorities the tools that they need to tackle the small number of cases where the education provider is not good enough. I hope that we can get the balance right, and I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Children's Secretary is working to ensure that that is the case.
	The hon. Member for Surrey Heath asked about NEETs and the September guarantee. I am told that through the September guarantee we are offering a suitable place in education and training to all 16 and 17-year-olds. In Budget 2009, we announced an additional £655 million over the next two years to secure additional learning places to help to meet the guarantee. I hope that that gives him some reassurance.
	The shadow Health Secretary raised several points about swine flu. Today there has been the significant announcement that the Government intend to extend the vaccination programme beyond the priority groups that were initially recommended by the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation. As he said, we are proposing to extend the offer of vaccination to parents of children aged between six months and five years. That particular group of young people has been chosen because there is evidence of higher levels of hospitalisation among them. There are reports today of further deaths from swine flu, which is of course sad news, but there has been a drop in cases.
	In extending the programme in this managed and phased way, we want to ensure that we keep a sense of order and discipline about the vaccination process. I was recently in Washington-I think that the shadow Health Secretary was too-and there were chaotic scenes in relation to swine flu vaccine. I think that he would agree-we have had a good measure of agreement on these matters-that we do not want to see such scenes in this country. We want the vaccine to be made available through GPs in an orderly way, and that is what we will continue to do. He asked whether we would take the campaign even further. We will keep all these matters under review, as he requested.
	Obviously, it is too early to say whether this week's drop in cases does in fact amount to an end of the second wave or whether it is the effect of half-term holidays. We must be vigilant about that; we do not know how the virus will develop over the coming months. However, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we will continue to involve and consult him at all stages and that we will keep open the question of further vaccination for further groups as well as carers, to whom, as we indicated today, we would want to offer the vaccine. We will keep that under review.
	Having had a few partisan exchanges with the hon. Gentleman, his comments about the take-up of vaccine, particularly among pregnant women, were very welcome. He was correct to say that this is a proven technology. The clear advice from the chief medical officer is that pregnant women are at risk of greater complications, and the best way that they can protect themselves is to have the vaccine.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) made some powerful points about cancer services under this Government which are a much better answer to the question asked by the hon. Member for Billericay (Mr. Baron) than the one that I gave a few moments ago. My hon. Friend also raised the important issue of pleural plaques. His constituency and mine share many similarities in that many people worked in industries exposed to asbestos. There is a legacy of people suffering from mesothelioma in certain parts of the north, as well as other parts of the country. In summer, the Justice Secretary announced the elements of a package involving an industry-funded tracing office to help to identify insurance companies and an exploration of ways of speeding up the process of compensation for people with mesothelioma, with more funding for asbestos-related diseases; that aspect is led by my Department. He said that we were taking forward those planks of a package and that a further announcement would be made in due course. In addition, we have agreed to the CMO's recommendation that we should commission more information on pleural plaques for patients, and we are working on that with the British Thoracic Society and the British Lung Foundation. I know of his great interest in the subject. Of course we will do justice to the people concerned by taking forward proposals, and I am grateful to him for raising the matter today.
	I shall conclude by speaking for a few moments about our Bill to provide support for people with the highest needs in our society and the provision of free care to help them. We have done a great deal to improve the NHS, but as I have said quite clearly, we must now tackle reform of our social care system. If we fail to do so, we will let down a generation of older people. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire is right that we should work to find a national consensus.
	However, again on the theme of confusing and conflicting statements, the hon. Gentleman said today that he supports a national care service, but I think I could furnish him with a quote from the day that the Green Paper was launched-we made an oral statement in the House-when he said precisely the opposite. He shakes his head, but I think the record will show that I am right. I think we will leave it there.
	The Bill will help to provide help in people's own homes to those most in need. It will guarantee free personal care for the 280,000 people with the highest needs, including those with serious dementia or Parkinson's disease, and help an additional 130,000 people who need home care for the first time to regain their independence. It is the first significant step towards addressing one of the great remaining unfairnesses of modern times, which is that people with the greatest care needs can still face the highest cost, and that those who suffer the most can pay out the most.
	I heard the attack today by Members of another place, but they are missing the very important point that the Bill will deal directly with 400,000 of the most vulnerable people in our society, many of whom will already have paid out of their own pockets large amounts for a number of years to fund the cost of their care. Take the example of somebody who needs 17 hours of personal care a week, which is about average for someone who requires intimate personal care. For the essential care that they need, which could include all aspects of their daily lives-eating, drinking, washing, toileting, dressing and so on-they would currently pay around £13,000. Under the Bill, that care will be free.
	I am not saying that the Bill is the whole answer, but I am saying that it is a bridge to a national care service. By taking this step, we are making the social care system of this country fairer, right now, for the most vulnerable. They will benefit in the long term from the measures that we are proposing.
	It must be right that we make this new system as preventive as possible, and that people are assisted at home and able to regain their independence. That is exactly what we should do. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire is right that some people will always need care in a care home setting-I agree with him on that-but it must be our intention to help people to stop them deteriorating and going downhill, and to invest early so that they can regain confidence and independence. That is the whole thrust of our policy.
	I must say that the hon. Gentleman's claims today at his press conference were the stuff of the gutter. To say that we are proposing to cut benefits for the most vulnerable people in our society, and to raise anxiety in the way that he has among those people, is scaremongering-nothing more, nothing less. We have said quite clearly that people will be guaranteed an equivalent level of support, so to go out there and say that they would lose thousands of pounds every year is low politics, and it crosses a line over which people should not go. It puts misleading thoughts in people's minds, and he knows that that is not the Government's intention.

Michael Penning: It is an honour and a privilege to stand before the House this evening to present a petition on behalf of those of my constituents who have had their lives so badly damaged by the Equitable Life debacle.
	The petitioners are residents of the Hemel Hempstead area, and the petition is a response to the Government's lack of response to the ombudsman's report on Equitable Life. The signatories are either former members of Equitable Life or their loved ones, or representatives of those who have sadly passed on already, before the compensation that they were due became available.
	The petition states:
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to uphold the constitutional standing of the Parliamentary Ombudsman by complying in full with the findings and recommendations of her Report upon Equitable Life.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	 Following is the full text of the petition:
	 [The Petition of residents of the constituency of Hemel Hempstead in the Eastern region of England regarding the Government's response to the Parliamentary Ombudsman's reports on Equitable Life,
	 Declares that the Petitioners either are or they represent or support members, former members or personal representatives of deceased members of the Equitable Life Assurance Society who have suffered maladministration leading to injustice, as found by the Parliamentary Ombudsman in her report upon Equitable Life, ordered by the House of Commons to be printed on 16 July 2008 and bearing reference number HC 815; and further declares that the Petitioners or those whom they represent or support have suffered regulatory failure on the part of the public bodies responsible from the year 1992 onwards, but have not received compensation for the resulting losses and outrage.
	 The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to uphold the constitutional standing of the Parliamentary Ombudsman by complying in full with the findings and recommendations of her Report upon Equitable Life.
	 And the Petitioners remain, etc.]
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